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Democracy and distrust Anna Unger The past period in European politics has often been labelled the decade of distrust, characterised by a growing dissatisfaction with democracy, rising populism, the weakening of liberal democracy, and increasing illiberalism. Many explain these turbulences with the impacts of the Great Recession of 2007-2008. However, in reality, present-day troubles can be traced back to the practice of global capitalism and liberal democracy since the 1990s. This chapter looks into the deeper reasons and dynamics behind the challenges that European democracies are facing today. It comes to the conclusion that liberal democracies are under the pressure of endogenous and exogenous problems alike, and have to deal with both dimensions in parallel therefore. It also offers the idea of a pluralist democracy, in which no actor, ideology, politician, or social group can be in a hegemonic position, as an alternative conceptual approach. Keywords: liberal democracy, distrust, populism, technocracy, political polarisation INTRODUCTION Imagine that a citizen, let’s call her Politeia Republica, had fallen into a coma somewhere in Europe, let’s say in the middle of the year 2008, and only woke up thirteen years later. She probably did not notice dramatic political changes at first sight. Politics had not changed that much: Angela Merkel was still the Chancellor of Germany, Western European politicians led the most important EU institutions, Vladimir Putin still ruled Russia, mass-shooting was still a daily threat to security in the US, and China slowly but surely was becoming an unavoidable actor in global politics and economy. However, when she began reading European newspapers, she realised that politics, both in Europe and around the world, had changed a lot indeed. From her perspective, the world looked like this: dozens of unknown politicians, who had been almost nowhere in 2008, were relevant actors and national leaders now, leading a number of unknown parties and movements, while many strong actors and parties of the millennium had disappeared from the news. Politeia probably had to google a lot when following current news: words like
