In search of the strong republic

Factors such as timing or deal skill are part of democracy. Frank-Walter Steinmeier benefited greatly from both. That is the only reason why the SPD politician surprisingly became Federal President in the era of CDU Chancellor Angela Merkel. And his re-election on February 13 is almost certain due to these influencing factors.

In the volume of essays he edited “On the Future of Democracy”, such details from everyday party life seem like trivia. He himself assures that party work is the opposite of a “dirty business”.

Here, in Steinmeier’s printed work, it is more about the very long lines of the system, about the raison d’Être, about higher ethics, about the weal and woe of Germany and Europe, challenged by crises and upheavals.

The constructive approach of making democracy storm-proof runs through this volume. May it not happen like in Michel Houellebecq’s dystopian novel “Submission”, i.e. polarization and the softening of values ​​in society.

The head of state prefers the spirit, feelings and certainties of three dozen experts from all walks of life. An illustrious crowd has come together – the former Federal Constitutional Judge Udo Di Fabio, transformation expert Maja Göpel, star writer Daniel Kehlmann, Nobel Prize winner Herta Müller, the British economic historian Adam Tooze and Margrethe Vestager, EU Commissioner for Digital Affairs.

Strong where practitioners report

You write here partly scientifically reserved, partly politically agitated, partly literary. Such a collection naturally offers a wide spectrum, but on the other hand little focus.

Steinmeier himself introduces the political Reader’s Digest with a wide-ranging essay, which documents the individual debates in his “Forum Bellevue”, which started in September 2017, from 36 perspectives.

With a lot of meticulousness he offers an anticipated summary, also a didactic encouragement to liberal democracy, which is sawed even in the European Union by Hungary and Poland. Steinmeier knows that with such difficult maneuvers you first have to praise him, so he praises the solidarity of the citizenry at the beginning. All citizens!

“Democracy,” he declaimed, “is only as strong as people are willing to get involved in democracy.” And: “Democracy is liberal, or it isn’t.” All typical Steinmeier phrases. Finally, the author demands attitude and the rediscovery of an allegedly neglected term: “We are a republic!”

Many people – with the exception of corona deniers and Reich citizens – have probably not yet registered the intellectual flight from the republic. Steinmeier, however, introduces in his republican ladder narrative about the “we” that hostility is spreading. Therefore, it shouldn’t just be about “defensive fear” against the many upheavals, but about “the conviction that we can shape our common goal”.

A culture of remembrance should not only be about the Shoah

We would have to “make the history of democracy even more part of the culture of remembrance”, not just the Shoah. And opponents of vaccination get to read “to recognize and recognize one’s own freedom in the freedom of others”. Compromises and defeats are to be “accepted in a republican spirit” and not to be understood as “narcissistic insults”.

Steinmeier is strongest where he does not shy away from self-criticism of his profession. Parliaments need “more women, more people with a migration background, more younger MPs, more non-academics, workers, just a representative selection of our society,” he explains with some justification.

This is “ultimately a duty of the political parties”, and “citizens’ councils” are recommended as a supplement. And, yes, unfortunately there is “misconduct to the point of abuse of positions for motives of enrichment” in everyday political life. Greetings from Messrs. Nüßlein and Sauter. Steinmeier, however, anonymizes such hot topics.

He keeps the whole problem with the new structural change in the public sphere, with the alarming Amazonization and Facebookization of society, strangely small. In general: the market economy with its claims and its upheavals do not occur at all. It is clear that all the fake news and disinformation texts on Facebook, WhatsApp or Telegram are the plague of today’s, and even more so of tomorrow’s, democracy. Here he lets others speak.

This book is best when practitioners report on their work

This democracy book is best when practitioners report on their work, such as Margrethe Vestager. The deputy head of the EU Commission describes the change from the chaotic Internet to the “overwhelming power of digital platforms”, and thus has the central topic on the roll. With the platform economy, she analyzes, there is a risk that our democratic order will be privatized and fragmented into our own small spaces.

Vestager: “The danger is great to think that the world is only as big as the part we see online, or even smaller” – and then to ignore that this world has been carved out “by a highly sophisticated algorithm based on infinite terabytes of data”.

The fact that Brussels is making these algorithms more transparent with old and new laws and keeping markets open is part of the tolerable dose of self-promotion. One would have liked to read more about the “restoration of justice” on online marketplaces, but each author has only ten pages here.

And so we remember the description of the common goal of Europe and the US to “break the iron grip that a few internet companies have now held on our economies and societies and restore democratic control over their activities”.