The Importance of Liberalism in Democracy

Liberalism as an adjective requires a prior appeal to liberalism as a comprehensive moral doctrine, but a free standing moral doctrine or whatever your form of liberalism I suppose. You can think of populism as the triumph of majoritarian democracy over liberal constraint. Right now, illiberal democracy is precisely a democracy whose leaders claim that once they have secured a majority, they represent the people with a capital P and the people can do anything including ensuring that the people continue to win one election after another.