What is Democracy

About the Film

“What is democracy?”

is not one, but actually two questions. On the one hand, the question is examined by taking a critical look at the state of parliamentary representative democracies that exist today. On the other hand, the question traces different approaches to what a better, more democratic system might look like, and which organizational forms it could take.
The project asked “What is democracy?” to numerous activists and political analysts in 18 cities around the world: in Amsterdam, Berkeley, Berlin, Bern, Budapest, Copenhagen, London, Melbourne, Moscow, New York, Paris, Rostock, San Francisco, Sydney, Taipei, Tel Aviv, Thessaloniki and Warsaw. The interviews were recorded on video starting in January, 2007. Even though all interviewees were asked the same question, a multiplicity of different perspectives and viewpoints became apparent in the ensuing discourse.

This pool of interviews

builds the basis for the eight parts shown in this video. This project (re)presents a kind of global analysis about the deep political crises of the Western democratic model. In one section, Adam Ostolski (Warsaw) explains that originally “the modern idea of democracy was connected to the notion of progress” and parliamentary states “had some tendency to become more and more democratic by including new types of political actors, such as workers and women. [...] But since the 1980s, since the neoliberal trend in politics and economy, we have a regression of democracy.” Lize Mogel (New York) notes that situation has changed in such a way, that when you think about representative democracy today, “you are not necessarily talking about individuals being represented, but more capital being represented.” Nikos Panagos (Thessaloniki) even argues that “representation and democracy are incompatible terms. Therefore, under no circumstances could the present system be called a democracy. It is just a sophisticated form of oligarchy.”

Modern idea of democracy

Lisa Gray-Garcia (San Francisco) seems to agree when she labels representative democracy a “fake-democracy”. David McNeill (Sydney) raises the issue of whether it makes sense “to continue contesting for the right to own and define the term democracy” or whether “it has been so corrupted and polluted... that it is better to be surrendered.” So is it better to surrender the term and search for new ways of describing how we can imagine our future?