Fundamentals

Liberalism and the Open Society: What Connects Them and What Sets Them Apart

By Daniel Sardá · Published on September 18, 2026

7 min read1,499 words

An open society protects criticism and the peaceful correction of errors. Liberalism supplies the rights and institutions that keep that openness from depending on the goodwill of those in power.

A society may hold elections and still close off the space in which its citizens debate, investigate, and hold power to account. There may be ballots and majorities, yet little protection for someone who criticizes a policy or publishes information that contradicts the official account. That is why discussing liberalism and the open society requires more than a list of democratic values.

The two concepts reinforce one another, but they are not synonymous. The open society describes a form of social life and institutions in which ideas and public decisions can be criticized and reconsidered. Liberalism is a political tradition that places individual liberties, limited government, and rules that restrain arbitrariness at its center. Together, they offer a practical answer to a question: how can a community change course without having to silence or destroy those who disagree?

Key idea: An open society is not a society without conflict; it is one able to work through conflict without turning disagreement into political enmity.

The open society: correcting errors without violence

The concept is closely associated with Karl Popper and The Open Society and Its Enemies, originally published in 1945. His concern was not to design a community without convictions, but to challenge doctrines that portray history, the nation, or a social class as bearers of a destiny to which everyone else must submit.

Popper's insight begins with fallibilism: people can be mistaken even when they act with conviction and in good faith. This idea, which Popper developed in his philosophy of knowledge, has an important political consequence. If no one possesses a final truth about how an entire society ought to live, institutions must allow decisions to be examined, errors to be identified, and course corrections to be made.

That does not amount to total skepticism. The fact that a claim is open to revision does not mean all claims are equally sound, or that evidence cannot be distinguished from propaganda. Openness requires reasoned debate, the testing of facts, and a willingness to change one's mind when criticism reveals an error. Pluralism protects the existence of disagreements; relativism, by contrast, would give up on discussing them by shared standards.

In politics, this distinction becomes concrete. A press that investigates government, a group of neighbors challenging a measure, and an opposition able to compete for power do not guarantee perfect decisions. They do create avenues for detecting abuses and replacing policies or officeholders without resorting to violence.

What liberalism contributes to that openness

Openness cannot rest on a culture of tolerance alone. It depends on rights and institutions that are not left to the convenience of a temporary majority. This is where its affinity with liberalism emerges.

In its broad sense, liberalism connects individual liberty with constitutionalism, the rule of law, and civil and political liberties. It does not require everyone to share a moral, religious, or economic outlook; it requires that they be able to defend their convictions within general rules that also protect their opponents.

Freedom of expression makes it possible to challenge a mistaken thesis and hear a minority complaint. Freedom of association gives people the means to organize criticism. Judicial independence and due process limit the ability of authorities to punish opponents selectively. Equal treatment before the law prevents those in power from turning their disagreement with a person into a legal exception.

These guarantees explain why institutional liberalism is not a procedural ornament. Rules matter because they distribute and limit the power to decide for others. An open society needs criticism to be able to have public consequences without the critic depending on the indulgence of those who govern.

Key idea: The right to dissent is more secure when it rests not on a ruler's promise, but on rules that can also be invoked against that ruler.

Institutions that make an open society visible

No single checklist exhausts the concept, and institutions do not work automatically. Yet some safeguards show whether a society can revise itself.

The rule of law. Authorities must act under public rules that apply generally, with checks against arbitrary decisions. If the law changes to punish a critic or favor an ally, the ability to correct power is weakened.

Free expression and information. Criticizing a policy is not enough if people cannot obtain information with which to assess its effects. A diversity of voices does not eliminate error, but it makes it less likely that a single account becomes untouchable.

Association and civil society. Trade unions, universities, neighborhood organizations, religious communities, businesses, and independent media make it possible to cooperate and defend diverse interests. Voluntary cooperation does not resolve every conflict, but it offers spheres of action that do not depend on a central command.

Real opposition and alternation in office. A legal opposition that can organize and compete turns a change of government into a peaceful option. Voting alone is not enough: people must be able to challenge incumbents, have votes counted with safeguards, and accept the result.

None of these elements is sufficient by itself. A constitution can promise liberties that are denied in practice; a formally private press can remain vulnerable to arbitrary pressure. The open society is therefore both an institutional and a cultural demand: enforceable rules, citizens willing to use them, and authorities unable to declare themselves the final arbiters of truth.

Why voting is not enough

Electoral democracy addresses an indispensable question: how to select and replace governments without violence. But majority rule does not authorize a majority to abolish the rights that make disagreement possible. If an election enables the censorship of critics, the persecution of associations, or the unlimited concentration of power, the democratic procedure loses the conditions that allow it to correct its own errors.

The relationship between democracy and the open society is therefore one of possible support, not identity. Competitive elections can be part of openness; by themselves, they do not prove that it exists. The more demanding test is this: can citizens challenge those who govern, demand reasons, turn to independent institutions, and advance an alternative?

Caution: Majority rule decides many disputes; it does not make the majority the owner of the minority's conscience, speech, or rights.

Liberalism, capitalism, and neoliberalism are not the same thing

Another common confusion reduces liberalism to an automatic defense of capitalism or identifies it, without qualification, with neoliberalism. These are related but distinct debates.

Capitalism describes, broadly speaking, an economic order of private property, exchange, and entrepreneurial activity. It can foster spheres of independence from political power, but markets alone do not guarantee freedom of expression, independent judges, or equal treatment before the law. An economy with private exchange can coexist with political controls that make criticism very costly.

For its part, “neoliberalism” names movements, periods, and controversies of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries; the term is often contested. The point here is not to defend a closed economic agenda, but to distinguish it from the basic institutional question: what limits prevent an authority, a majority, or a dominant group from silencing others? For that particular discussion, it can be useful to explore the distinction between classical liberalism and neoliberalism.

This caution also helps when reading Popper. His defense of an open society and liberal democracy does not, by itself, make him the spokesman for one specific economic formula or for unqualified laissez-faire. Attributing such a precise program to him would require additional textual evidence.

Openness does not mean unlimited tolerance

A reasonable objection asks whether an open society must tolerate even those who seek to suppress everyone else's freedom. The answer cannot be that any conduct is justified merely because it expresses an opinion. Violence, intimidation, and the destruction of the safeguards that make dissent possible undermine the very conditions of openness.

But it does not follow that the state may censor every idea it considers dangerous. Restrictions need general rules, due process, an opportunity for defense, and public scrutiny. Otherwise, the exception created to protect pluralism quickly becomes an instrument for persecuting it.

The balance does not consist in eliminating deep disagreements. It consists in preserving a framework in which they can be debated, organized around, and resolved without either side claiming the right to decide which opinions deserve to exist.

A compass against the monopoly of truth

Liberalism and the open society meet in a discipline of political modesty: power must be open to criticism because it can err, and citizens must be free to live and associate in different ways because no one has the authority to impose a complete truth on everyone else.

This is not a promise of harmony or a formula that replaces difficult deliberation. It is a standard for evaluating institutions and decisions: wherever criticism is punished, opposition is made impossible, or a majority faces no limits, openness contracts. Wherever people can speak, organize, challenge, and change governments under common rules, society retains better means to learn from its mistakes.