Open society

An open society protects individual freedom, tolerates dissent, and lets institutions and policies be changed through public criticism and peaceful political processes.

Liberal democracy: A political system combining competitive elections with civil liberties, legal limits on power, and protections for minorities. Elections and civil liberties give public criticism routes to influence government.
Karl Popper: An Austrian-British philosopher of science and political thinker who wrote The Open Society and Its Enemies. Popper made open society the central political ideal of his 1945 book.
Social criticism: The examination and evaluation of society’s institutions, practices, and power relations. Criticism exposes failures that open institutions can address.
Closed society: A social order that restricts dissent and treats established authority or tradition as resistant to public revision. It is the direct opposite of a society organized around criticism and change.
Minority rights: Legal and political protections for groups that lack numerical or political dominance. Open societies protect people whose views or identities are unpopular with majorities.
Freedom of speech: The right to express ideas and opinions without undue government restriction. Public criticism depends on people being able to express dissenting views.
The Open Society and Its Enemies: Karl Popper’s 1945 work criticizing historicism and political philosophies he saw as hostile to freedom. This book established the modern framework associated with the concept.
Piecemeal social engineering: Karl Popper’s approach of reforming institutions through limited, testable changes rather than comprehensive redesign. Incremental reforms make policy correction possible while limiting the costs of error.
Authoritarianism: A political system that concentrates power and restricts meaningful political competition and dissent. Authoritarian rule limits the public criticism an open society depends on.
Tolerance: The willingness to permit beliefs or practices one disagrees with, within limits set by others’ rights. Tolerance allows disagreement without demanding uniformity.

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