Many politicians and people in public life believe that the reference to our democracy or even the mere mention of democracy is something positive in itself.

It is easy to forget that democracy is not a homogeneous construct, that democracy does not exist in a context-free space and must always be seen in interaction with society, legal norms, state institutions and the current zeitgeist.

Democracy is not good per se, but rather the form of democracy practiced must be evaluated in its context. Depending on the assessment, the form of democracy can then be categorized as either a formal or a genuine democracy.

In a formal democracy, abuse of power, corruption and a deep state are not excluded. The ruling system has found ways to eliminate the control of the demos (the actual sovereign).

Now, even in a formal democracy, the boundaries between dsyfunctional and ineffective democracy are fluid. Furthermore, the principles of power, which have been shifted from the demos to a political elite, are different in the various forms of formal democracies.

What formal democracies have in common, however, is that acceptance among citizens erodes over time and dissatisfaction with the political system increases. The closer a formal democracy approaches the structures of an authoritarian state, the more likely the population is to accept a “capable autocrat” over an incompetent autocracy/technocracy that treats citizens in a similar way to an autocracy.

The path from a formal democracy to a de facto autocracy is gradual. In order to transform a formal democracy back into a real democracy, it is necessary to break up the prevailing political structures using the peaceful means of democracy.

German democracy is currently on a dangerous path away from genuine democracy towards a formal, autocratic form.

Dwindling public support for democracy and our social system is often blamed on the population itself. The fact that this could also be due to the performance of the people’s representatives, the party structures and the basic structure of our current democracy is often not discussed.

Unfortunately, it is becoming increasingly difficult for voters who are open to democracy to find a meaningful choice. There are various reasons for this:

• No party has existed for a long time.
  Visions of the future, strategies and political foresight
• Repeating like a prayer wheel that there are no alternatives leads to
  Radical loss of confidence
• Marginal differences between the party programs lead to the
  Arbitrariness and interchangeability
• Lack of performance targets and sanctions in the political process
  implementation make a mockery of the current democratic system

It makes little sense to choose something that does not promise a solution.

Having to elect representatives who constantly develop sanctions for the population, but who themselves operate in a sanction-free space, erodes basic trust in the current political system. As a politician of any party stature, only ever making demands of civil society without ever delivering will not lead to anything good in the long term.

A future-proof reform of our entire social structure
including the current political establishment, equipped for the 21st century.
This is becoming increasingly important and urgent.

Critics of the current democratic system are often portrayed as enemies of democracy, opponents of democracy or anti-democrats. People forget that factual, well-founded criticism points out grievances that should or must be remedied and can lead to an improved, more defensible democracy. In many possible forms of democracy, the system of rule does not have to be changed in order to achieve an improvement.

Criticizing the currently prevailing democracy does not mean being against democracy, but against its current form and implementation. The reflexive condemnation of the current policy towards its critics sheds light on the underlying mindset. A dangerous mindset.

Since the establishment of post-war democracy, no improvement, evolution or reform has been considered in politics, but rather the preservation of the status quo, however inadequate it may be. It is a means of this policy to glorify one’s own actions as the opposite of the actual ones. Which succeeds brilliantly in many parts. However, the longer entangled power structures are maintained, the more likely a Deep State, which is undemocratic per se, becomes.

The current Berlin democracy has no built-in protection mechanisms to prevent a deep state, a state within a state. No one checks measures implemented by the government in the gray area of executive and interpreted legislation, which are never reviewed and judged by the judiciary, indeed shy away from the light of publicity on the grounds of reasons of state.

Democracy does not mean making a cross only once in 4 years on a ballot paper that contains no alternative. Here, for once, the word “without alternatives” makes sense. It is frightening to see the accumulation of incompetence in our state, federal and European parliaments.

The assumption that it is not incompetence but malicious intent is no less disturbing. It is time to fulfill the promise of the founding fathers of the Bonn Republic: Reunification in free self-determination of the entire German people. This historic opportunity was deliberately squandered in 1990 and can only be rectified today with enormous effort.

The German people as a whole had neither determined the conditions for reunification, nor had they done so in free self-determination. It was a handful of Western representatives who set the conditions for the entire nation without a referendum or democratic legitimacy. Reunification was therefore neither free, nor self-determined, nor by the people. It was the most blatant failure of democracy in modern times.

However, it is not up to our parties in the corrupt party democracy, which is more interested in maintaining power than in the common good, to correct this. It is time to make German democracy more grassroots democratic. Important issues must be decided directly by the people and not just by their representatives.

The Swiss model of democracy provides a good example. It can also be more democratic.