Entschleunigte Demokratie

Zum zeitlichen Wechselverhältnis von Demokratie und Kultur

Abstract

The rise of populism from the political right is sometimes explained as a result of an acceleration of society, which is attributed to developments in modern and latest times (confer, for instance, Zygmunt Bauman and Hartmut Rosa). Taking up a transdisciplinary scientific perspective, called “ecology of time”, hardly known in political science, this contribution deals with the interdependence of democracy and society. In this context, democracy is understood as a special kind of collective action, connecting the two desirable dimensions of “ratio” and “voluntas” (Habermas). As to the ecology of time, there are two different time patterns in any living system, hence also in democratic structures: cyclic (reversible) and linear (irreversible) processes. In order to secure and respect the necessary inherent times of these processes in a working democracy, this contribution, along with the ideas of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Zeitpolitik, pleads for political, societal and cultural deceleration, and for a transfer of time resources from the economic to the political system.