DAWN OF DEMOCRACY

Robert Misik in conversation with Veith Selk

DAWN OF DEMOCRACY

»Perhaps a good idea in theory, but unfortunately it fails in practice!«

What used to be said of communism is now true of democracy - it seems increasingly untrustworthy, has legitimisation problems, the elected parties are blocking each other, nothing is progressing and the anti-democratic parties are gaining ground. Veith Selk's sober study is a „brutal diagnosis of decline“ that „could soon prove to be prophetic“, the Hamburg newspaper „Die Zeit“ celebrated Selk's „Democracy's Twilight“. What makes Selk's chain of evidence so worrying: It is not the „anti-democrats“ who are the problem; rather, he shows that the decline of democracy is an internal tendency of modern democracies themselves. And adds: „A reversal of this development is unlikely under the current conditions.“ So what are the internal dynamics of modern societies that make an imminent recovery rather unrealistic? What are the consequences? And which cherished phrases of democratic theories should we abandon as quickly as possible?

Veith Selk, Private Lecturer in Political Science at the Technical University of Darmstadt
Robert Misik, Author and journalist

Veith Selk, is a political and social scientist who conducts research in the field of political theory and intellectual history. He specialises in the history of political thought, populism, democracy, political ecology and social conflicts in socio-technical transformation. He is a fellow at the Point Alpha Research Institute and a private lecturer at the Technical University of Darmstadt. In addition to his academic work, he is involved in political education and in the field of citizen science. He lives in Hamburg.

Veith Selk:
The dawn of democracy. A critique of democratic theory
Suhrkamp Verlag, Berlin 2023, 336 pages, 23 euros