Liberalism: In its classical form, liberalism is usually seen as the dominant ideology of the Western democracies rooted in Enlightenment thought (Marshall, 1998). It is “usually identified with the philosophies of John Locke, David Hume, Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, who emphasize social contract theory, a world where human beings are guided by enlightened self-interest, rationality, and free choice, and argue for the minimum intervention of the state in the
lives of individuals.