ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces liberal democracies as complex societies that contain elements of both liberal and democratic ideas and values. Describing a liberal democracy in general, and in Australia in particular, is not straightforward. Emy and Hughes argue that the contemporary emphasis on economic liberalism within liberal democracies amounts to an overturning of the twentieth-century consensus in Australia that welfare liberalism was essential to national development. Liberal democracies are complex societies in which people often disagree over fundamental concepts and values. 'Liberal democracy' is a term used to describe many states around the world that share some characteristics in common. Liberal democracies are relatively new historical entities. The ideas of liberalism became prevalent in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, in opposition to the notion of divine right, the idea that monarchs were imbued by God or by nature with the right to rule.
