Richard Vernon, Political Morality: A Theory of Liberal Democracy (London and New York: Continuum, 2001), 202 pp.,

Book Review.
Vernon defines liberal democracy in a minimalist fashion, as a regime that meets ‘a certain standard
of electoral accountability’ while providing its citizens with ‘some level of constitutionally protected
liberty’ (p. 1). He proceeds to construct what he claims to be a correspondingly minimalist but
internally consistent philosophical justification for liberal democracy that can survive—or, perhaps
more accurately, adroitly sidestep—three sorts of familiar critiques. First, Vernon claims that his
construction is untouched by various criticisms—sociological, psychological, epistemological, ethical—
of liberalism. Second, it is unaffected by various objections to the substantive content, coherence
and consistency of arguments for democracy. Third, his construction meets the objection that liberal
democracy is a ‘paradox or oxymoron’ (p. 7) because its constituent liberal and democratic components
are mutually inconsistent.