Challenges and Innovations of Democracy

Representative democracy is faced with economic, social, and political challenges for which it must find answers. The extensive triumph of democracy and the collapse of “real socialism” have thrown democracy back on itself. The standard of evaluation of democratic practice is now increasingly its own ideals and no longer (worse) practices elsewhere. Diminishing political participation and decreasing trust in the political elite and political institutions are prominent symptoms of the crisis. In the process, the economic, social, and political challenges of democracy result both “from outside” as well as “from inside.” Financial and capital markets have largely withdrawn from the control of nation-state institutions and thus from democratic rules of the game as well. Numerous waves of migration have contributed to an ethnic, cultural, and social heterogeneity of the population in nearly all Western democracies and cast doubt on the classic model of political and social rights bound to national citizenship. Consequently, the “internal” political challenges of representative democracy are increasing. Politics’ diminishing power to act as a guiding force and the decreasing responsibility of the political elite are accompanied by growing doubt among citizens as to their legitimacy. Within the context of these challenges, old certainties are being called into question: the democratic production of consensus; the processes of a fair, just, and for the most part accepted redistribution of dwindling resources; as well as political equality and opportunities for participation are becoming increasingly precarious and politically contested.

The question of how the “uncontested” post-1989 democracy can face the variety of challenges and what innovative output it has to generate in order to be regarded as legitimate and worthy of support in the eyes of its citizens in the future is one of social sciences’ central research issues of the 21st century. This is a vital desideratum. Sociological and economic research may have been dealing with the developments for years (heterogeneity of the population, transnationalization of the economies) that, as political challenges, confront current democracies. However, reference to democratic innovations as a response to these challenges has only rarely been made to date.

In contrast, in contemporary political science crisis scenarios are experiencing a boom—reflected by terms such as “democratic diseases,” “deconsolidation,” or post-democracy (Cain et al. 2006; Dalton 2004; Offe 2003, Crouch 2004). In addition, the examination of democratic innovations has long been dominated by normative-theoretical approaches that are only gradually being supplemented by empirical research (e.g., Saward 2000). There is a preponderance of methodological access over case studies, whereby the focus lies predominantly in the Anglo-Saxon region (e.g., Smith 2009; Fishkin 2009). Numerous questions essential for the necessary further advancement of democracy could not be addressed due to the discipline-based layout of previous research, which also focuses on individual aspects. This elementary gap in research shall be closed here.

The pivotal guiding question of this research focus is the following: What innovations does democracy develop to respond to social, economic, and political challenges? How successful and promising are these innovations? Democracies deal with the challenges described above in different ways: on the one hand, government actors experiment with a variety of institutional innovations. On the other hand, innovative potential is produced beyond the state that is primarily sounded by social movements and actors in civil society. The effects of such strategies and potential shall be investigated in this research focus of the PhD program, initially with respect to the experimental field of local and regional democracy. In doing so, emphasis will be on the empirical investigation of the advantages and disadvantages of these innovations—that is, about the question of whether they are really suited for solving the problems—as well as on the assessment of alternative concepts of democracy. Today, reflections on a “democracy of the future” comprise a wealth of different concepts—from deliberative, associative, and cosmopolitan to post-parliamentarian procedures. Any expansion of democracy, including its frequently discussed subnationalization and internationalization (Europe, world society) can only occur on the basis of a strong nation-state democracy. While the nation state may no longer be the sole center of political power, it will remain the essential and indispensable column of multilayer democracy in the future as well. This is where political decisions gain binding status for the collective, and this is where democratic legitimacy has to be generated that constitutes the reservoir for the future advancement of democratic practices and of democracy itself.

A diversification of the guiding question allows elucidating the arrangement of the content of the planned research and qualification projects. A politico-economic perspective on the challenges of democracy reveals that the nation-state claim to control is curbed by the mobility of globalized capital and financial markets. From the point of view of democratic theory, in the face of transnational market processes and market actors, questions arise as to what new forms of democratically legitimated and at the same time effective market regulations are available. How do democracies deal with the economic challenges of the globalization of politico-economic interdependencies? What innovations do they develop, and what do these “deliver”? A look at the social challenges of democracy moves issues of social inequality and economico-political discrimination into focus that result from migration and pluralization processes and contribute to a growing ethnic, religious, and cultural heterogeneity of the population. Committing citizens to “their” state becomes fragile to the extent that alternative subnational or supranational loyalties gain in importance and a significant share of the population remains excluded from elementary democratic participatory rights. What innovations are necessary in order to (re)establish the opportunities for access and participation for all citizens and secure the material and cultural basis for the legitimacy of the democratic system of government? The political challenges of democracy represent the research project’s third horizon of questions. Democracies rely on generating a measure of support by their citizens, without which they cannot live or survive. However, due to the disenchantment with parties and politics, doubts over legitimacy have radicalized to such an extent that they can no longer be dismissed as largely harmless side effects. Past attempts to dispel the population’s doubt over legitimacy have in turn generated new sets of problems—to a certain extent as political challenges of the second order. Now, how successful are these innovations of the first and second order?