The recent Bundestag election outcome may suggest that there is simply not enough space for a democratic decision-making process in Germany. At the very least, this is one of the conclusions that can be drawn from the results. It is time to think about what is necessary to make a real democratic process possible again.
It is widely known that the way party primaries select candidates is a problem. In the distant past, when comparisons of the advantages and disadvantages of different forms of parliamentary democracy were even a topic of discussion in school, a system in which voters, not parties, selected the candidates they were supposed to represent was always more effective. However, it is not yet clear how the decline in the willingness of the population to engage in long-term political activity will exacerbate this problem in the future.
The different chances of parties that primarily serve the interests of the wealthy and others, which is a long-standing theme, led to the development of state-financed party funding, with the aim of preventing large donations from a few individuals from skewing the outcome. The cost of a campaign is, after all, quite high and the fewer active members a party has, the more expensive it will be. In the past, there was a large SPD with no interest in being outdone by a richly funded party like the FDP. This was, in fact, a reasonable approach. The biggest legitimation problem of a representative democracy is, after all, how to bring the interests of the majority of the population, who are less well-off, into the equation. Equalizing the preconditions is a crucial step; however, the political decisions of the past few decades (and even the changes within the parties themselves) show that this step is not enough.
Besides the parties, there were countless member-financed organizations, from sports clubs to citizen initiatives. The Germans were once famous for founding associations. Three Germans are a club, they used to say. The concept of “civil society” that is still widely disseminated today is based on such associations, in which members themselves, in a democratic manner, decide on the activities.
However, the real “civil society” today consists not of associations with many members, but of organizations that are primarily financed by large donations. These organizations can also receive direct support from state institutions, as can be observed in the context of censorship activities. This is not a new issue. The regulation of non-profit organizations was originally designed to limit the ability of special interests to simply outspend others with a lot of money. The non-profit status is linked to a commitment to refrain from direct political activity and the goals set out in the bylaws are reviewed before registration. The result would be, if still proceeded in this way, a certain brake on the well-off and a small advantage for the member-financed association. But this is all in the past and in the past few years, open lobbying has been recognized as non-profit, as long as the “right” keywords were delivered (an example of this is the Deutsche Umwelthilfe) and on the other hand, non-profit status has been revoked where the political direction was unwelcome, even if the criteria were met.
The problem with organizations, or what is so nicely called “astroturfing” is that the image of the world that one forms, which surrounds one, is also fed by such sources. There is a shift here. After local reporting has been massively reduced, small, local associations can only barely get into the press. Structures like the Deutsche Umwelthilfe, which, with only 475 members, has 12,000 supporting members who do not really have a say, can, through large donations, in various ways, push themselves to the forefront, which then also applies to the topic they are promoting. This has greatly contributed to social issues being pushed far to the back and the impression being created that climate and environment are the most important issues of all. Not that this happens overnight; it’s about decades. But the change is massive.
It’s not just the fiction of societal significance that is the problem, but the change that this brings about in terms of the perception of political processes. Astroturfing disempowers. With a lot of money and media power, artificial campaigns like “Fridays for Future” spread the idea that political activity must be successful. Whoever enters the real political arena with this image in their head, in which every demand is supposed to be successful overnight, is quickly frustrated and withdraws.
At the same time, these organizations, which are not democratically structured but have strict command structures, like Greenpeace, contribute to the decline of democratic processes even within parties. In the Left, for example, there was always talk of “campaign capability.” However, the understanding of how such a capability arises was not in convincing the members, but in the distribution of centrally determined arguments, which the members were then supposed to repeat.
Now, the topic of intra-party democracy is always difficult. But what does it do to society if the pace-setter of debates is no longer the real need, but an artificial construct of organizations that are not supported by members, but by large donations? And if, on top of that, the media personnel, even if they are not directly tied to a state or private source, no longer have any idea of the real timeframes of democratic processes? Or have grown up so that they think the political show, like five-minute photo protests of some green big shots, is the real political life? And what chances do real demands of the less well-off majority have, then, of being successful, or even of being visible?
To get back to a situation where the conditions are again conducive to the emergence of themes and interests, one must first see how certain questions are being pushed to the top. The whole woke Trans-Hype, for example, is only possible because interest groups of a shrinking social minority, with enough money, can create the impression of an overproportional importance. Exactly that is what so much anger is generated by and why such developments lead to so much social unrest: because the personal perception, that there is simply not a noticable problem, collides with the medial and political, which, thanks to the invested funds, makes it a significant topic. For comparison, there are significantly more single mothers than Trans-whatever; but because these do not receive the same massive support, their difficult situation is not present in society.
The same happens with poverty pensions or the housing issue. Everything disappears behind the hyped-up topics, so that the gap between the image and reality grows steadily. A democratic decision, no matter where and when, has a central prerequisite: the availability of the necessary information. If this information is not available, the decision becomes a farce.
This is not new. This recognition is the basis for all information rights of members of parliament. But the thicket of astroturfing, media control and censorship is so dense now that one has to wonder how a German voter can still make a decision, if he is constantly being served unimportant information and important information is being withheld.