Democracy, as the rule of the people, is a classic paradox. The people, the actual sovereign of the state, have no power, decision-making or determining authority whatsoever in the modern form of democracy of the 22nd century.
The only way to maintain the illusion that the individual citizen has any possibility of influencing the fate of the state is to vote in an arbitrarily determined cycle. But that is not the case.
On the one hand, once elected, they do not have to adhere to election statements or program points, nor do they have to fear any kind of consequences for misconduct or wrong decisions. Only their own political clique determines whether and who has to resign for which behavior. Even then, it is not clear whether the political career was ended or only extremely slowed down and delayed.
This form of impunity and lawlessness, coupled with non-existent barriers to entry into the career of a professional politician, mainly attracts power-hungry and immoral people who are not or only rudimentarily suited to the actual task of representing the people in a meaningful and dignified manner.
But it is precisely these elected representatives, who hardly differ in their character image of a morally and ethically degenerate subject beyond party boundaries, who have a decisive influence on the fate of the people.
The envisaged separation of powers, which is intended to prevent an abuse of power, does not work, as the political office-holders largely determine the rules of the judiciary, which in turn controls the executive. There is therefore a power pyramid that only prevents the rapid and direct abuse of power, but not the creeping abuse that slowly erodes the protective mechanisms of democracy and can then lead to new forms of rule.
In recent history, Turkey and Russia are some of these examples.
Thus the paradox of modern German democracy is that the people are the rulers and yet have absolutely nothing to say.
To change this, the entire social system needs to be rethought. What may the parliament alone decide, where should the whole people be consulted? We need to move away from a party democracy towards a grassroots democracy with a new separation of powers that can successfully prevent the abuse of power.
A positive example of this is Switzerland
