Abstract:

Classical liberals, such as Locke, Tocqueville and Mill, have developed arguments to justify constitutional democracy and defended the spreading out of the suffrage. Classical liberals have defended the democratic developments against its critics in difficult times. However, with the development of public choice theory, some philosophers started to criticize the basic assumptions of democracy very harshly in the liberal tradition. The problems such as the gap between the democratic policies and the popular consent and the widespread political ignorance of the voters are frequently given as examples of the democratic failure by public choice theorists. Caplan and Brennan, public choice libertarians, want to restrict political rights of the incompetent voters through establishing a kind of aristocratic political regime where the informed voters only have the right for political rights. Therefore, they want to break the link between political rights and the civil rights in the liberal tradition, and thus, offer a radical proposal. In this article, the reasons of this radical proposal in liberal tradition are examined, and the assumptions of Caplan and Brennan are criticized

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