The attack on the Capitol in Washington, the decline in turnout in the West, and the marches of governments that have lost faith in the Convoy movement around the world.
All of these are said to be signs of a crisis in modern democracy. Is the claim true?
interviewed three well-known policy scholars for this story. They tell us what they consider to be the worst problems in Western democracy and also how they should be solved.
The parties have sunk deep into their pottery
Democracy Researcher Yascha Mounk believes that at the heart of the democratic crisis in the United States is growing confrontation.
According to Mounk, an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University in the United States, the events of just over a year ago at the Capitol took the polarization to the extreme.
Mounk estimates that U.S. digging into their pottery has only accelerated in recent years.
– Studies show Republican supporters are now even more radically and right-wing politically than Trump.
The trend of polarization began in the United States as early as the 1960s, when the Republican Party felt that the distinction between Republicans and Democrats was too vague and needed to be clarified.
Republicans Donald Trumpin the rise to president in the 2016 election seemed to lock in a dichotomy and change the political reality as it is today: Political decision-making is roughly paralyzed when Democrats and Republicans are unable to agree on anything together.
When a person sees in his or her bubble only thoughts that support his or her own vision, the political reality narrows and the polarization deepens.
The competition for identities escalated into a cultural war
Yascha Mounk raises cultural wars, for example, over the increase in confrontation. They, too, threaten democracy.
According to Mounk, the most pressing political issues in the United States are issues related to issues such as migration, trans rights, racial relations, ethnicity, gender identity, and religions.
To put it bluntly, an individual’s own emotion determines the political dividing line: Whether I accept a fellow human vegetarian diet, give another religion the same value as mine, or whatever I think of a neighbor’s desire to love another neighbor of the same sex.
At the same time, polarization is strengthened as one’s own identity is constructed, emphasizing its differences to other identities.
According to Yascha Mounk, the worst-case scenario is that Republicans and Democrats will take identity issues and the battles of cultural wars to an end, with the dichotomy extending to society as a whole.
In Europe, the problem is the narrowing of party differences
In Europe, the outlook is not quite as bleak as in the United States, Mounk says. This is because cultural identity issues have not become as important in the political debate as they are behind the Atlantic.
In the transformation of European political culture, the narrowing of the gap between the center-right and the center-left has been more significant than identity issues.
Yascha Mounk points out that even 30 years ago, a voter made a choice easily based on how he or she viewed the welfare state.
If he wanted a more generous welfare state and higher taxes, then he voted for a candidate from the left. He chose the right-wing candidate if he wanted a narrower welfare state and lower taxes.
Politically, a compromise was easy to find.
– If one proposed a tax rate of 30 and the other 20 percent, then a settlement was found at 25 percent. There is no compromise on cultural issues. They either lose or win completely.
Cultural issues are matters of opinion. They cannot be expressed in numbers. One’s own view is not compromised, but one’s own opinion is specifically intended to cover one’s position.
Polarization can also be useful
Professor with a Belgian background Chantal Mouffe is of the opinion that the crisis in democracy is due to the similarity of the parties.
Mouffe, a politician studying politics at the University of Westminster in London, would like a return to a right-wing-left division.
He says polarization can also benefit politics.
– Polarization is necessary. Competing options are at the heart of all political action. Without them, there is no democracy.
However, the polarization prevailing in the United States is considered harmful by Mouffe. According to him, in the United States, the relationship between parties is based on the fact that the other party is seen as an enemy: it has no right to opinions and must be destroyed.
Mouffe points out that in a successful democracy, competing views should exist without an enemy setup. Competing positions take political thinking forward and offer options to voters.
“It was a mistake to start holding elections”
What if the problem of democracy is deeper: how is Western democracy structured?
Professor of Political Science at Yale University, USA Hélène Landemore turns its attention to a party- and election-based electoral system.
According to the French-backed Landemore, democracy went wrong on the wrong track as early as the 19th century.
– At that time, elections were chosen as the way to elect decision-makers. That was a mistake.
Through him, people who are too similar to each other, who do not correspond to the country’s population and its different characteristics, are selected as decision-makers.
– This is why a large number of people feel that they are not represented. They feel that they cannot be heard or seen, and their problems do not arise.
Landemore is ready to ring death bells for parties.
– Parties are no longer empty shells. No one wants to join them. I wouldn’t want to be cynical, but parties are only for those who make a career in them.
If the system does not work, a lottery will be drawn
Professor Hélène Landemore would turn the system into an open democracy, with the People’s Assembly deciding on matters by lot.
– So the Council would be a nation in miniature. People would come from the country and the city. They would be single parents, poor, homeless, bankers, young, old – people from all walks of life.
Opponents of the idea usually point out that such a people’s assembly cannot be as knowledgeable as professional politicians.
“Of course, such a council needs all the expert help and support functions that parliaments have,” says Landemore.
In support of his seemingly utopian proposal, he cites the example of France, where the president Emmanuel Macron decided in 2020 to convene a secular council to consider climate action.
Experts repeatedly presented a carbon tax, which they saw as a good guide to climate action.
– Instead, the lay group proposed 147 different measures. There was no carbon tax among them, but they were fairer for the whole population, says Professor Hélène Landemore.
According to the Council, a carbon tax would have raised the price of petrol. Increased gasoline costs would have been felt the worst in the wallets of people living in remote areas.
In addition to the National Assembly, Professor Hélène Landemore would also like citizens’ initiatives. Referendums would also play a role in the legislation.
The old model parties, he said, could be platforms that activate people to take initiatives. They could also campaign under referendums.
The division of executive power would also come from the promised country of the referendum, Switzerland. There, the supreme power is held by seven people who rotate in the position one year at a time.
– Many people abroad do not know who is currently president of Switzerland. Not necessary, because all that matters is that things are taken care of, Landemore says.
He sees concentrating the power of the president on one person as an immature and childish way of thinking about politics.
– As though Barack Obama, Trump or Macron would be the savior. It is a strange idea that the fate of a country depends on one person.
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