The problem with liberal democratic systems is their top down methodology for handling social data. This leads to an undermining of the social dialectic that in instrinsic to a participatory grass roots democracy. The assumption that whatever phenomena takes place within such a system is indicative of the will of the people is where the dialectic is lost, and idealistic postulations have been put in their place. This produces the idea that the status quo is acceptable -- but that, in consideration of the acceptability of this status quo, behaviour can still be tweaked from above to produce maximum effectiveness in relation to serving the state apparatus and its functions.
Top down control, even that based on ostensibly "objective" statistics and their ostensibly "objective" interpretation, lead to manipulation from above, as groups of people have their environments tweaked for improvement. The objectification of the citizens and their needs in this way is the way in which full citizen rights are undermined. To be manipulated from above as an object is not to have one's full subjectivity acknowledged. One's subjectivity is instead viewed as a function of one's a priori place within the system -- particularly in terms of being a member of this or that demographic. Thus, a very watered down subjectivity is acknowledged, but not one that embodies that side of the dialectic that pushes against current social norms with a conscientious idea to change them. Rather, the bourgeois notion of the individual is that he or she is quintessentially passive and objectively analysable without the capability of offering resistance to such top-down analysis.
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