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There was one good thing about the Cold War, we could say cynically: it was so easy to distinguish the right from the wrong in the world; the democratic west and the undemocratic east. Yet, today the fight for democracy has become more complicated – even in the west. By Paul Nolte

Until two decades ago, it all seemed so simple: In the western societies, mainly in North America and Europe, there was democracy; elsewhere, its lack was bemoaned in open dictatorships or different variations of authoritarian regimes. The perspective for the future was that our own, western democracy must be preserved. Other countries and cultures should be able to enjoy the same freedoms and self-government as soon as possible. That applied until 1989, in the age of the “Cold War,” when the Communist dictatorships rendered the most powerful alternative to democratic systems. This seemed to be all the more true after the fall of the wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union. Did this not prove that liberal, parliamentary democracy was the goal of history, to which all states would gradually pivot? In Germany in particular, after reunification we lived in the awareness that now the democracy that had been re-attained, but incompletely halved in 1949, was finally accomplished, the wounds of history had been healed. The dream of the Revolution of 1848 seemed to have come true: a united nation with a democratic constitution!

Then, in recent years, the picture suddenly changed. The western societies, particularly the European ones on either side of the old “Iron Curtain,” have become uncertain about the condition and future chances of their democracy. And when people take to the streets elsewhere in the world, in Asia or in North Africa, for freedom and democracy, when they protest, shake at the thrones of their rulers, in Frankfurt or London or Barcelona they no longer say: Good job, soon you’ll have the same democracy as we; can we give you a little advice? Instead, the people in Europe call: We need to do that too; our politicians also need a shaking, our circumstances are rotten, too – can you give us a little advice? When people demonstrate in western countries, the anger is probably directed at the conventional political structures, modus operandi and elites, but not against democracy as such. On the contrary, the demand for more, different, better democracy is heard almost everywhere and unites local issues, such as the protest against a new railway station or the expansion of an airport, with global movements like “Occupy.”

The fight for democracy has become more complicated, and it has returned to the western arena, where, until just recently, we believed democracy only needed to be preserved, protected, defended in the form in which it was once won and in the form, for example in Germany, in which the Basic Law was cast. Yet, apparently it is not a fixed, unchangeable set of rules. And even if it were, the democratic set of rules would have to change because the world around us is not standing still: a new stage of capitalism is reshaping industry and society; national states are striving for European unity, but not totally; not to mention the technological changes and the social impact of the digital revolution in particular. Hence, it is not surprising that a new uncertainty about democracy has seized the people in Europe most particularly, more than it has the people in the United States, Canada or Australia.

Who represents the will of the people?

In the meantime, crisis-laden developments of various kinds are mounting. Each needs to be understood in itself and yet also grasped with its reciprocal effects. The global financial crisis amalgamated with a European public debt crisis, and the dynamics of the financial markets put pressure on democracy. Do we even have any time to discuss and agree, or does the clock pulse of the markets force us to make curtailments to democratic procedures? This besets us in Germany when it is a matter of the rights of the Bundestag, and the Greeks and Spaniards all the more, who sometimes experience European policies as imperial arrogance towards their national self-determination. But not only is the financial crisis or capitalism at fault for this. In fact, for decades Europeans have neglected to come to an understanding over the balance between national and European sovereignty. The states of the euro zone did not wish to acknowledge that a monetary union leads us deep into a shared responsibility, which can only be administered in shared democratic institutions.

In turn, this must be differentiated from a crisis in representative democracy, a crisis of parliamentary rule and the party system that upholds it. We no longer wish to be content with electing MPs every four or five years and then leave the rest to these representatives. Do the parliaments still express the will of the people; have they not, under the protection of the apparatus of political parties, long made themselves independent as elitists? And even if this were not the case, shouldn’t the citizens be asked more frequently and directly to execute their political will? Hence, the institutions of “classical” democracy – the parliament, government, also the administrative authorities, in part the judiciary – seem more and more often an establishment that does not represent the people, but against whom the people have to make themselves heard by means of demonstrations on the streets, petitions for referendums or Internet “shit storms.” At the same time, however, in parts of Europe, primarily in the east of the continent, from Russia to Hungary and all the way to the Balkans, it seems the boundaries between democracy and authoritarian rule are still being fought over, over the security of basic rights such as freedom of speech and the press, and over the constitutional state.

It is indeed a complicated and multilayered picture! We must take care not to lump all civic rebellion together as if protests in Germany or in France – established democracies and free societies – were the same thing as protests in China, Belarus or Iran – politically restricted systems, if not dictatorships. And yet the rebellion sometimes has similar motives and a common denominator in the striving for acknowledgement of the individual, for transparency, for opportunities for more – and more direct – political participation. The old battle formation no longer applies – here stable western democracy, there non-democracies that perhaps may one day reach the west. But one thing is certain: democracy did not disappear at the beginning of the 21st century, neither as a practical reality nor and less than ever as a great utopian aim, as a global human yearning. It is the major topic of our times.