§1"Liberal democracy is falling apart" §1

**Yascha Mounk believes that this is also true in Germany. The Harvard political scientist is extremely worried, but says:"The system is still reformable. For example, through a new nationalism.**

*Yascha Mounk, born in Munich in 1982, teaches political theory and comparative politics at Harvard University.*

**SZ: America is not a democracy. That's above an article you wrote in Atlantic magazine. Isn't that exaggerated? The democratic institutions, the courts, for example, are proving to be very stable even under Trump.**

Yascha Mounk: The article deals with the longer perspective. The US political system consists of two elements, the liberal and the democratic. Liberalism includes the rule of law, the protection of the rights of individuals and respect for minorities. The democratic element is that the people govern and their opinions are translated into politics. But the two elements have been diverging for a long time. Especially the democratic element suffers, also in Germany.

**What does that mean in concrete terms?**

The role of money in politics is growing. Lobbyists have an increasing influence on politics. And politicians are part of an elite that lives relatively isolated from the majority of people. At the same time, more and more decisions are being taken out of the democratic political business. The role of the courts is becoming increasingly important, the influence of central banks, and international organisations and bureaucracy aswell - from the European Commission in Brussels to the Environmental Protection Agency in Washington. Together, therefore, a very large number of important decisions are no longer taken by elected politicians. This has already undermined democracy in parts long before the populists emerged.

**So we do not even live in a liberal democracy in Germany?**

Germany is partly a system of law without democracy, a system of undemocratic liberalism. This is not only due to the role of money in the political system - which is worrying in Germany too, but not nearly as much as in the USA. In this country, it is mainly due to the many bureaucratic institutions that make the majority of decisions. The power of the Bundestag is limited in many respects.

**That's exactly the diagnosis the populists make. Are they right, then?**

Populists react to real developments. A lot of citizens have the feeling:"Nobody listens to me anyway." And that's not just misguided people. That is why I call the system that populists are currently building in countries such as Poland or Hungary: Democracy without justice or illiberal democracy. In many respects they implement the will of the majority. Unfortunately, restrictions on the rights of minorities are particularly popular.

**The will of the majority is being executed, so that's okay? **

No, because this democratic energy is increasingly directed against the other fundamental element of our political system: the liberal one. The populists are undermining the rule of law, and this can be observed in Turkey and Russia, but also in Hungary and Poland. They attack independent institutions. In Hungary, the electoral commission is entirely dominated by loyalists of Viktor Orbán.

**The people want it so...**

Yes, but once the liberal element has been softened, at some point the democratic element will no longer be protected either. Once the government has gained control of the electoral commission, once it has abolished the independence of the judiciary, once it has turned off critical media, then there are no more free and fair elections. And if these populists become unpopular at some point, people will hardly be able to vote them out. The illiberal democracy is a system of government in its own right, but it is not a stable one. There is always the danger of slipping into dictatorship.

**You are vehemently defending the liberal element. But don't we have to talk about neo-liberal democracy for 20 years now? From a democracy that has completely submitted to the market and thus prepared the field for populists?**

I consider the concept of neo-liberalism to be too vague to argue well. Often, everything you don't like is simply called neoliberal.

**Then we call it: the transformation of societies into supposedly organically functioning markets.**

Many market critics like to think internationally and claim that the market is so bad because it has caused so much harm to the Third World. But it is precisely those who think internationally and are not only interested in the fate of the steel workers in Michigan, but also in the really poor people in India or China, who cannot seriously look at the last 25 years and think that the market has caused above all disaster. Because India and China have opened up to the market, billions of people have risen from poverty to the middle class. Poorer countries in particular owe much to the market economy.

**And yet the dissatisfaction is so great. **

Of course, as a result of globalisation and other economic shifts, including technological progress, people feel that they no longer have control over their own lives and that their country no longer has control over their own destiny. The proponents of the brexit have aptly expressed this in the slogan' Take Back Control'.

**So we have to live with this loss of control?**

No, even in the age of globalisation, even in a market economy, it is still possible to give people more control over their own lives. For example, by building a flexible welfare state. By making benefits for people less dependent on their current work. By countries doing much more to combat corporate tax evasion, by stepping up their efforts against tax havens, and by imposing much harsher prison sentences on tax evaders. If someone is a German citizen, he or she has to pay taxes in Germany.

**So neo-liberalism must be tamed....**

I believe that the constraints of the supposedly neo-liberal economy are not as strong as is often claimed. Politicians must finally find the courage to make full use of their room for manoeuvre.

**Yes, you're right. From a historical point of view, people all over the world have never been better off. Richer and richer, better educated and healthier. The argument of the past 25 years has been: if that is the case, liberal democracy will also become stronger and stronger. The much quoted end of the story. They write in their new book about the disintegration of democracy.**

The assumption of Francis Fukuyama from the late 1980s and early 1990s that we have reached the end of history, that liberal democracy has become established, that was the assumption of all of us: Political scientists, journalists, citizens. It was inconceivable that liberal democracy could ever end in Germany, France or the USA. I've started to doubt that.

**Why?**

In the decades after the Second World War, the decades in which democracy has consolidated in Germany, the quality of life grew extremely fast. This is different today. I was born in 1982 in Germany. The quality of life I have, or that most of my school friends have today, is no higher than the one we had become accustomed to as children. This nourishes fears about the future and frustration. The question is: can our system deal with this frustration in such a way that it remains as stable as it was in the age of rapid economic growth?

**Liberalism cannot keep its promise of the future - progress for all.**

Yes, and that leads to a huge change in attitudes towards politics. People never loved politicians in the past, never trusted them one hundred percent. But then they said to themselves:" Well, you know what, in the end I'm so much better off than my parents, politicians care about my interests afer all." Today they say, "I am no better off than my parents. I'm afraid my kid's gonna be worse off than mine. Let's try something new politically."

**Is this the reason for all the hatred? It has a whole new quality today. Many are engaged in opposition in the mode of radical resistance against the political class, against journalists. It is also about Article 20 IV, the right of resistance to an illegal government. It's all so obscene, so shrill.**

There are three basic driving forces for the rise of populism and for the shrillness of our politics. Firstly, basic confidence in politics has been reduced because people have hardly any economic progress to report in their lives. Secondly, anger at immigrants and refugees, at those who look and think differently. We have not yet successfully completed the transformation from a monoethnic, monocultural to a multiethnic society. And thirdly, the emergence of social media.

**The social media, a beloved culprit.**

I don't idealize the state before the invention of the Internet. This was a media world in which many opinions were ignored. In which a group of media makers who were culturally relatively similar had incredible control over what could and could not be said and thought in public. But the condition also had great advantages. False reports could not spread so quickly, quality control was much stronger. And openly racist or insurgent opinions could be kept out of the mainstream more easily.

**Where does the fear of the unknown come from?**

There is no example in the history of mankind of a multi-ethnic society that offered equal opportunities for all. In this respect, we are now embarking on a unique experiment. Just a few years ago, most Germans had a clear idea of what a "real" German should look like. Today it is clear that there are Germans within a large ethnic range. A German can be black or have ancestors in Syria and Turkey. That's a big change. And this leads to fear of loss. Fear of loss in terms of collective identity; fear of loss in terms of one's own social status. We must ask ourselves: how do we together build a just multi-ethnic society that really works?

**How can this be achieved?**

I changed my mind on one point. I grew up in Germany with a migration background, as they say. At the time, I thought that we should simply let nationalism disappear into oblivion. I don't know about that anymore. And that is because of the fact that we are in the middle of two political positions. On the one hand, part of society celebrates sub-national collective identities, such as ethnicity, religion or sexuality, but rejects any national identity as reactionary. But the field of the national lies completely fallow. Another part stirs up the beast of nationalism. Racists, for example, people who want to live out nationalism as monoethnically, monoculturally and aggressively as possible.

**So it must be fought after all.**

Nationalism will always carry the potential for destruction. But that's precisely why I see him as a semi-wild beast that we have to domesticate. We must focus more strongly on this collective identity, but we must openly shape it. We must say: Yes, we have something in common as Germans. But not only as bio-Germans, but as Germans, whether they come from Turkey, Nigeria or Korea. It doesn't matter whether they are Christian or Muslim or Jewish or Hindu or not religious at all. There's something that unites us.

**Like what?**

A lot of things. I have just travelled from Kehl to Strasbourg and I was surprised how much Kehl looks like Berlin and how much Strasbourg looks like Paris. We have a common political system, we have economic solidarity. We use the same media, we share a certain environment.

**But why must the nation then take centre stage, why not human rights, for example? That can also unite.**

People always want to distinguish their own group from the group of others. A great historical concern is to expand this circle, the own group as much as possible. And this works best when we enable people to live out many different identities at the same time. So I can feel at the same time as a member of my family, a member of a certain religion, as a Bavarian or Saxon. And at the same time I can also understand myself as a German and as a European.

**Do we not need more political institutions that seek and find global solutions to global problems? And more cosmopolitanism?**

Cosmopolitan literally means citizens of the entire cosmos, of the entire universe. And yes, there are deeply moral people who manage to get involved in the same way for everyone, for a stranger as well as for their brother, for Dakar and for Hamburg. That impresses me insanely. The world would be a better place if everyone could. But I can't do it myself. The idea that the majority of people will ever really think and act cosmopolitan is unrealistic.

**Can't you try it? It can't hurt.**

It can hurt. The demand for this often leads to a complete lack of solidarity. If I am to commit myself to all people, but this does not motivate me, then in the end I do not commit myself to anyone - or I fall for xenophobic rather than inclusive nationalism.

**The three points you mentioned have one thing in common: they have made the world much more complex. There are no more simple answers. In a world like this, the populist has it a lot easier, doesn't he? He's all about feelings, not facts. The best example is Trump.**

The 2016 election in the US was a battle between an extremist policy of change and a moderate policy of status quo. And now it is clear that the extremist policy of change can win. This does not mean, however, that the majority of voters - whether in the USA or here in Germany - are extremist. Most people have relatively moderate political attitudes. But they wanted change so badly. And if the only way to achieve change is extremist politics, they are vulnerable. The answer to this must be that moderate political forces no longer manage the status quo, but instead commit themselves to real change.

**A revolution through the moderates? How credible can this still be after so many years of being the same? **

There may be changes in our Western societies. For example, we could make it much easier to build new apartments and houses. That would be the simplest way to curb the rise in housing prices, which is so driving people so hard for a good reason. And if it is so expensive to build new roads, train lines or airports, then it is also because of the sclerosis of our institutions, because of bureaucratisation, because of over-judicialisation. Moderate parties must implement real change. Then they can promise people a better future in a concrete and credible way, and inspire people with enthusiasm. We must not be depressed to think that we are living in an age of extremes and that the extremists will always win.

**So the players remain the same, but they do everything better? Don't the actors also have to change? Isn't there good populism?**

New politicians and also new parties would undoubtedly benefit politics. Experience shows, however, that populists, who sometimes seem to be quite sympathetic in the opposition, will always play off their power in government against the rights of the people and against independent institutions. Populism cannot be defined by certain political preferences. There are populists who are hypercapitalist and populists who are anti-capitalist. There are populists who, as in Germany, are raving against Muslims. And there are Muslim populists, see Erdogan in Turkey. Nevertheless, the concept of populism has a coherent core.

**Namely? **

A certain idea of politics, a certain vocabulary, a certain moral imagination. For example, when people don't acknowledge that the world is complicated. That it is difficult to offer every new generation a tremendous economic growth. Instead, populists say that the political class is only corrupt, just self-interested. There is no one who actually stands up for people's opinion.

**No matter what the problem, the solution is the people? **

Exactly. There are, however, two problems with this. Firstly, in this way populists always define their supporters as the only legitimate people. All those who oppose populists are denounced as part of a minority or the elite - and branded as enemies of the people. Secondly, you have made enormous promises to the people without really coherent political approaches. If they then fail, and they do so with a high probability, they declare sabotage. They claim that the old political classes still have secret power. Just as the Donald Trump is trying to go deep state with his theories.

**You say that liberal democracy is not the end of history. And saying what could come after her is dangerous. Can't there be something better? **

I am a political philosopher and historian of ideas. I enjoy speculating about other systems of government that we may invent in the future. I am also aware that there have been many political innovations in history that people could not foresee. From today's perspective, we cannot know whether liberal democracy is the end of history at all times - whether we will ever find something better. But one thing is clear: of the alternatives that are currently intellectually accessible to us, liberal democracy is clearly the most attractive. It's crumbling right now. And that's why we have to fight for her. The writer Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa has written this beautiful sentence: To keep things as they are, we have to change everything. This is the moment we find ourselves. We must reform the system. We have to think fresh and new. Not because liberal democracy is wrong or inadequate, but because it is still by far the most attractive and humane political system imagined by mankind.

**Fresh and new thinking, good cue. It is highly likely that there will again be a grand coalition in Germany. Although the SPD announced shortly after the election: under no circumstances.**

I consider the debate on the grand coalition in Germany to be narrow and naive. The political situation has changed structurally. A representative democracy with proportional representation will only work well if we have ideologically coherent coalitions that can alternate from time to time. So for example: black-yellow, at some point will be the unpopular, then red-green, which govern some years, will be unpopular, we change again. Today, however, right and left populists hold a quarter of parliament. This has two worrying effects. On the one hand, the old populist saying that all established parties are similar in any case is slowly coming true. Because if you always have to coalesce with each other, then you really do align. The second effect is that we can only change the government by choosing the radicals, the populists. That is now also true.

**Why?**

Those who elect Greens or CDU/CSU today may possibly vote for one and the same government. You can't know that on election day. This is a structural problem that worries me greatly. However, it is not solved by the SPD joining the Grand Coalition, nor by the SPD not doing so. The alternatives to the grand coalition are either Jamaica or a minority government, both of which would be a kind of grand coalition. Or new elections, which would probably give the populists more votes - and thus further deepen the structural problem.

**And democracy crumbles. **

My concern is very great. It is no longer certain that liberal democracy will survive. But we are still able to act. We can still commit ourselves to solving the problems of our society and transforming moderate parties of the status quo into moderate parties of change, helping them to win elections. I can't promise anyone a happy ending. But if we stand up for our values with courage, we can greatly increase the probability of a happy end.