One of Andrzej Mleczko’s drawings presents a group of people to whom a unusual visitor speaks, who just got off the time machine: “I come from the future to inform you. The authorities will never keep their promises!’
This kind of gag fits autocracy, but erstwhile we talk about democracy, a hard question arises. In democracy, can politicians lie unpunishedly, or promise proverbial pears on willow? Of course, there are many electoral promises and they have different character. There are promises of both circumstantial and general or even speculative. The former, specified as ‘500+’, changes in taxation rules, or a simplification in the number of ministers, parties usually keep up. If they don't, it's a brawl. This was the case in 2010 erstwhile the Liberal organization in the UK was incapable to keep its promise to destruct the fees for college due to the fact that the ruling Tories boycotted the idea. This example explains why governments made up of respective parties with different programs frequently find it hard to deliver on their promises.
For example research by Tomasz Gackowski showed that in 2007 PO and PSL together made 647 promises, of which 246. It's hard to tell whether it's a lot or not, due to the fact that the meaning of the promises is not comparable. presently in Poland many concrete promises It cannot be realized due to the fact that it is blocked by the President, which is the consequence of the constitutional rule of division of power, not disputes within the framework of the government coalition.
However, in this essay, I will not address the deficiency of implementation of circumstantial promises, but those that are not even clear. The promises of a general nature are of large importance to the electorate, though they are more hard than in the case of circumstantial promises to blame the government for lack of full implementation. erstwhile I talk about general promises, I mean promises to improve the well-being of citizens, to guarantee security, to defend the environment, to reduce public debt or to reduce immigration. What do these promises have in common? They require commitment at global level for a period longer than the word of office of a given government.
Take the example of migration. An effective migration policy requires a long-term and joint commitment by the full of Europe to reduce the causes of migration, specified as war, poorness or climate change. No country has been able to prevent migration by erecting grids or walls. The wall can be promised and realised, but its impact on reducing immigration is rather limited. Moreover, the data show that most of the alleged illegal migrants come to the country legally, and any of them stay after the visa expires.
Economic growth besides depends on many hard to control by a circumstantial government trends – investment, trade and currency. safety is mainly in NATO's hands today, and environmental protection depends not only on what the EU is doing, but besides on the actions of America and China. I do not request to add that safety requires many years of investment in weapons, technology, organisation and diplomacy. A akin long-term commitment beyond 1 word of government is essential in another fundamental issues for citizens. Problem is, democracy has lost control over space and time, which I will effort to visualize in this essay.
I'm going to start by describing a survey showing disappointment in the current democracy. I will then present a catalogue of explanations for this situation. I will conclude by trying to identify ways to cure democracy by strengthening its impact in space and time.
Disappointment of Democracy
We know Winston Churchill's cynical message that democracy is the worst form of government – but for all the others that have been known so far. any studies propose that specified constructive cynicism is besides frequently shared by voters. For example, most voters examined by professors from the University of Glasgow expressed confidenceThat politicians don't even effort to make electoral promises. Despite this, the majority of citizens inactive bother with the ballot box in the election.
However, you should not deceive yourself. There is solid technological evidence showing a decreasing trust in the institutions of democracy, not just in individual politicians or parties. There are besides data showing that more and more people uncertainty that elections can improve their life prospects, and even more so their children's prospects. Elections can change government, but can they change our sense of prosperity and security? Let me give you any examples.
In December 2023, the investigation centre Ipsos cognition Power published the results of investigation on 7 democracies, including Poland, showing that more than half of the respondents are dissatisfied of how democracy is now functioning. (Only in Sweden was the majority satisfied).
Other Investigations, led by the Pew investigation Center, showed that only 37% of Americans believe that today's children, erstwhile they grow up, will be in a better financial position than their parents. In France, the results were even more worrying, due to the fact that only 9% of the respondents replied that their children would be better off; 71% thought that the next generation would be worse.
In yet another test More than 60% of Europeans have said that they "do not trust" their governments and parliaments. In Poland 70% of Poles do not trust political parties, 69 percent. He doesn't trust Government and 68% parliament. Notabene's biggest problem surveyed in 2023 was not PiS, but prices and inflation. The percent of Poles satisfied with the functioning of democracy in this survey was 58; the other opinion was expressed by 40% of respondents.
W one of the polls respondents were asked what they would say to reduce the number of parliamentarians in their country and thus get places to give artificial intelligence with access to our data. Half of the respondents, especially young ones, responded enthusiastically!
Similar examples can be multiplied. They confirm the thesis that democracy present is not coping well with the challenges of the planet specified as the instability of financial markets, rising debt, erosion of social benefits, migration, pandemics and climate change. In Europe, countries have managed to put out the fire of further crises, but the main problems remain. It must be very optimistic to believe that the south of Europe, especially Greece, will yet pay off its debts, that the Turkish or Egyptian dictator we have paid will solve our migration problems, that climate change will be stopped without costly investment in alternate energy sources. I am no longer talking about the Russian invasion of Ukraine, why democracies have not been able to prevent, and what they have been doing poorly so far.
As 1 of the top authority in social sciences rightly showed, Robert Dahl, the legitimacy of democracy is based on 2 basic foundations: social participation and the effectiveness of the democratic system. We can discuss whether the strategy of parliamentary representation continues to supply the expected social dimension of participation in national decisions. However, it is hard to deny that, in fresh years, the effectiveness of Western democracy in solving problems that plague citizens is seriously failing, as evidenced by the expanding number of crises and the cited results of public opinion surveys.
What I wrote above does not mean that autocracy is an attractive alternative. However, it explains the increasing impatience of citizens of the failure of democracy, its organs and its representatives. So it's time to make a diagnosis. Which is liable the existing democratic crisis?
Attempts to explain
There are many theories or hypotheses that explain the crisis of democracy. Recently, most populists are responsible. It is hard to deny that they are ruining democracy, despite the noble slogans they preach promising to represent the interests of the grey electorate, not just the elite. The effectiveness of populist governments is besides modest to make a diplomatic statement. The question, however, is whether populism is liable for the crisis of democracy or whether it is the consequence of this crisis. The populists have always been in democracies, but in the past they had limited support in the electorate. The popularity of populists began to grow with the increasing the democratic crisis caused by the crisis of liberalism.
This leads to a second hypothesis explaining the crisis of democracy. Liberalism was in the beginning a program, or even ideology, of classes oppressed by aristocratic classes wielding power. The primary postulate of early liberalism was to restrict the self-government, in peculiar the monarch. It can be said that democracy is inherently liberal, and that non-liberal democracy is just an invention of autocrats.
In time, however, liberalism became the ideology of the people of power. For many decades Europe has been ruled by centro-right and centre-left parties, who have adhered to the ideology of liberalism based on political and economical freedom. As time went on, social inequality began to rise, the welfare strategy was gradually eroded, and abroad policy of liberals was dictated primarily by the motive for profit, not peace, human rights and democracy. The neoliberal version of liberalism is present the subject of criticism, peculiarly for subjugating public power to the economical markets, and this leads to a 3rd hypothesis explaining the crisis of democracy.
Capitalism has always been a favourite subject of Marxist criticism. These are less and fewer, and the criticism of capitalism is not decreasing, but growing. The financial crisis at the end of the first decade of this century is mainly plagued by bankers, but besides neoliberalism ideologists calling for a simplification in public marketplace control. Deregulation and privatisation are blamed for the paralysis of democratic governments. Politicians who effort to lead the promised social or environmental policy to voters are disciplined by markets. 1 could say that the last leader in Europe who tried to defy the markets was French president François Mitterrand – his efforts ended in failure. Today, as Marxists admit, democracy is in the hands of the markets, which makes many electoral promises not realized if they do not fit the logic of the markets, or – as anyone would like – to the interests of the capitalist class.
The illness of present democracy is besides indicated Post true. Since it is widespread mainly in the Internet, where there is no control over what is circulating in the space of fresh media, the post-truth is frequently identified with fresh forms of communication. The common good, so crucial to democracy, is unattainable erstwhile fact is hard to separate from falsehood. erstwhile online views are a mixture of finger-dried information, conspiracy theories and deliberate misinformation, it is impossible to talk about deliberal democracy. erstwhile a citizen limits political activity to pouring out his regrets in an online bubble, it is hard to talk about democratic participation. Networked demagogic anti-vaccination, anti-migration, anti-ecological, anti-European and anti-Ukrainian campaigns are delegitizing democratic governance and hindering the implementation of electoral promises.
The European Union and its euro are besides frequently blamed for the paralysis or incapacitation of democracy. The European Union is making more and more decisions, even though European democracy is in its infancy, to say the least. Moreover, and more legitimately in our context, European decisions are sometimes taken against the will of the governments of individual associate States, or even against the will of the people expressed in the general referendum. This was the case for Greece during the euro area debt crisis.
The weaker associate States of the Union are besides informally "pressed to the wall" by the stronger associate States. The European Commission is accused of political interventions in the interior affairs of individual states beyond its Treaty powers. The European Court besides blocked various national moves. All this makes individual governments incapable to conduct independent economic, migration or environmental policies in line with erstwhile promises.
Each explanation of the crisis of democracy outlined above is justified, but only to any extent. The question, however, is why governments under the leadership of parties that are not afraid to fight the pathologies of capitalism or populism are not doing much better than neoliberals or populists with migration, debt or climate change. The Biden administration in America or Sanchez in Spain can service as an example. Neither organization – neither the left nor the right – importantly halted the technological monopoly of giants.
The European Union is criticised for its left and its right, but one more time it is given rights beyond existing treaties – it is in the healthcare sector, it is in the environment, it is in debt management, it is again in migration policy. This suggests that if the EU did not exist, it would should be invented. The net has many flaws, but it is hard to live without the net today. I can imagine a planet without democracy, but without the net I can't imagine it.
Instead of avenging populism, capitalism, liberalism, the EU or the Internet, let us consider whether democracy can inactive function in the planet of network connections of people, money and ideas via the Internet. In another words, it can be argued that democracy's weakness should not be blamed solely on populists, capitalists or Eurocrats, but on democracy itself. possibly democracy in its present form is outdated, ineffective and unrepresentative.
Democracy in the net era
The invention and spread of the net forces us to think about space and time in politics. The net flattened the world, as the celebrated American writer Thomas Friedman said. This comparatively fresh technology has combined various parts of the planet previously unknown. Digitization created a global conectography, as Parag Khanna showed, in which even tiny villages depend on large urban metropolises thousands of kilometres away. Globalization was already known in the mediate Ages thanks to the celebrated Marco Polo, but the planet of net connections entered the grip of all citizen who has a smartphone.
The net has not only made the planet flat and small, but besides dramatically increased pace life, work, communication, commercial transactions and financial flows. Accelerating the pace of life and social change generates winners and losers, forces fresh attitudes and values, leads to fresh structures and social hierarchy. These changes have different advantages and disadvantages for circumstantial social groups. Accelerating the production of medicines or basic goods is of course a affirmative phenomenon, but it is hard to ignore the "stealing of time" that this acceleration generates by affecting our public and private lives. erstwhile our sleeper turns into an officeTo which the supervisor can send an email with instructions at any time of the night, the account of technological losses and profits is rather complicated.
The flattening and speeding up of the world, of course, has an impact on politics and peculiarly on democracy, which is bound by state boundaries. The laws of national parliaments apply within national borders, not outside them. Furthermore, democracy is simply a hostage to modern voters. Politicians promise to act for not only us, but besides our children and grandchildren. But erstwhile it comes to hard financial decisions, it always wins the 50+ generation, due to the fact that it has the most voters.
This temporary and spatial regulation of democracy was possible to keep in the pre-Internet world. Today, however, it is simply a large burden for her. Industrial companies are moving in a fresh cybernetic world Like a fish in water. Even the criminals have mastered the Internet. However, democracy inactive acts as if there is no Internet. It is hard to identify 1 major improvement of democracy since the birth of digital technology.
Although democracy stands still, technology is inactive moving forward. present we are witnessing a combination of artificial intelligence and digital technology with hard to imagine effects. But erstwhile the heads of companies dealing with artificial intelligence offered to governments A six-month moratorium on the improvement of this technology, their proposal remained unanswered. For artificial intelligence experts, six months is simply a long time, but democracy can do small or nothing during this period.
This example illustrates the gap between the planet of politics and the real world. The uncontrollable improvement of technology can consequence in human destruction, but democratic governments prove powerless or even defenseless due to the fact that they function in a different space and time. Democracy, by its nature, is laborious due to the fact that it must guarantee the representation and consultation of different social groups. The problem is, there's no time for this, due to the fact that things run on a different calendar.
So we have been in Europe for respective years governing on WhatsAppAs my English colleague Jonathan White said. Both the financial, migration and later pandemic crisis required immediate action, suspending average democratic procedures and bringing parliaments into the function of statistics.
The rulers were improbable to have a choice, as the democratic procedure threatened with disaster. In addition, most actions during these crises required the participation of many transnational actors specified as the global Monetary Fund, the European Union or global banks or pharmaceutical companies. This has even more marginalised parliaments and hindered transparent political decisions.
When the European Parliament asked the head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, to show the protocols of her negotiations on Covid Vaccines with Astra Zeneka, Moderna and Pfizer, stated that these protocols were missing due to the fact that she was negotiating on WhatsApp and the exchange of messages deleted. Welcome to the fresh planet of turbocapitalism without borders and control!
Democracy, space and time
Politicians have always tried to control space and time. Most wars and revolutions were about boundaries defining relations between territory, power and rights. The celebrated rulers of this world, Julius Cesar, Robespierre, Stalin, Pol Pot or Atatürk, established their own calendars. Our time was variedly regulated, synchronized and made available by individual political and economical regimes. The law established in democracy determines how many hours we are to work, and on which days, erstwhile we are entitled to electoral or retirement rights, until what week we can have abortions, at what age we can legally have sex or marry, for what time the president or parliament is elected, how long it must go from committing a crime until its statute of limitations and so on.
Some of these regulations concern only countries, another Europe, and yet others around the world. The question is whether national democracy is inactive coping with all this. The deep crisis of democracy shows that time and space have gone out of control, due to the fact that the territorial scope of democracy's action is besides limited, as is its time position defined by a rigid electoral calendar.
The problem will not be solved by the establishment of a fresh calendar or the establishment of a ministry to address long-term problems. Replacement of national states with a European state Many problems will not be solved and will make others. The united states of Europe will have more influence, but the distance between government and citizens will increase. In addition, many cases require the intervention of local or national actors. The Bureaucratic Union is not the right actor to advance culture or make various forms of civic participation.
Neither a national state nor a European state is simply a recipe for current problems. The recipe is to make a network Europe in which different local, national and European actors will be encouraged to act together, or they will gotta do so. The current monopoly of national states on basic decisions concerning citizens cannot continue. In Europe, combined vessels, working on increasingly faster turns, the limited spatial and temporal position of states and their democracy systems is not sustainable.
Why am I proposing a Europe of networks? investigation on the online revolution has shown 1 dominant phenomenon: digitalisation has benefited most from informal horizontal networks, and the most has lost bureaucratic and centralised states. There are, of course, various kinds of networks; the mafia is besides a kind of network. However, it is easy to identify those that work for the benefit of citizens. I mean a network of NGOs, cities or entrepreneurs.
How this Europe of networks works in practice, we could see it during the last pandemic. Initially, countries closed their borders even on importing medicines from another EU countries and tried to face the pandemic by issuing further national decrees. However, it shortly turned out that covid crossed national borders with large ease, that wellness protection is in the hands of cities and regions, that global companies specified as Pfizer and Moderna can supply vaccines, that the EU can aid us all financially, and that the planet wellness Organisation is needed to coordinate global efforts to combat the pandemic. As a result, the countries have proved to be only 1 of many actors helping citizens, and not always the most effective.
Although the efficiency and democratic legitimacy of the states are increasingly fragile, they have a monopoly on making fundamental decisions and dividing public funds. This, in my opinion, is not sustainable in Europe, which requires swift action across borders. This leads to the following conclusion: politicians are incapable to keep the most crucial electoral promises, as they represent the inefficient states where democracy is presently located.
The answer to the question of how to make democracy in Europe is difficult. However, it cannot be dismissed by the claim that democracy can only function in national states, due to the fact that there is plenty of evidence that this is not the case.
Democracy must let the decision of actors who in this fresh digital planet operate faster and more efficiently than the states. If it cannot solve the fundamental problems of the modern world, citizens will turn their backs on it. Cities, NGOs, trade unions, employers' organisations and, of course, the EU represent citizens in different ways and, more importantly, make public goods. Their function must not be limited to cleaning up the mess created by the states.
Network democracy will be different from that dominated by political parties that treat the states as their property and prey on the false story of national patriotism. Better to hazard a democratic experimentation than to cultivate nostalgia behind a strategy that was destroyed.
**
Jan Zielonka is simply a prof. of political discipline and global relations at the University of Venice, Ca’ Foscari and the University of Oxford. He cooperates with the EMC. His latest book is named A Lost Future and How to Recover It (Warsaw: Post Factsum 2023).
* Oh, my God *
The article comes from a collection Almanach 2024/2025 Concilium Civitas under the editorial board of Jacek Żakowski, published by the Collegium Civitas Foundation under the Creative Commons Recognition-Non-commercial Use-Without Subsidiary Works 3.0 Poland (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 PL). Author's footnotes were omitted.
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