Institute for Human Sciences

Beyond do-it-yourself politics, short-lived mass protests in the metropolises and a further swelling of the ranks of the popular right, the democratization of democracy is still possible, contends Claus Offe. But not if political life remains locked within the “prison of the market”.

Decisions on large-scale infrastructure projects and sustainable energy development must draw on dialogue-based processes. “Future councils” can provide a basis for political identity through the expression of regional cohesion and clarify the implications that large infrastructure projects have at a local level.

As democratic imaginaries linked to new protest movements circulate globally, Nilüfer Göle reassesses relations between the public sphere and democracy; and shows how the Gezi Park movement, among others, has used public space as a site for the rehearsal of new forms of citizenship.

A political culture of total optimism has obscured one of the paradoxes of European unity: a constrained democracy, borne out of the experience of the devastating wars in the first half of the twentieth century, and aimed at suppressing pernicious populist instincts, has now become the source of new resentment. Coupled with the unintended consequences of the single currency, these are exceptional times indeed. And the challenges awaiting democracy are not about to get any easier, according to Stefan Auer.