Karolina Wigura: Reading your essay “In Mistrust We Trust” reminded me of one night when I was living in a student dorm in Munich. Deep in the night Xiaofeng, my friend from Beijing, knocked on the door. She was very upset. I thought that maybe something bad had happened so I invited her in. Xiaofeng sat down and asked me in a low voice: “Karolina, do you believe in democracy?” I would like to start this interview with the same question…

Ivan Krastev: It is a difficult one to answer, because the notion of democracy has been utterly trivialized. Let’s start from pointing out that in a sense democracy has never been a problematic system before. Of course, since the times of the ancient Greece some classic arguments against it have been formed. They said that it is unwise to give power to people who are not very knowledgeable and not interested in politics. Later an argument was developed claiming that democracy cannot be introduced in large-scale communities and that it works only in city-states. Today we are mostly facing a challenge of democratizing huge political organisms, like India, China or the European Union. The problem is that nowadays democracy has many enemies, but very few critics.

What are the consequences of this situation?

A gradual lessening of the self-repair ability of global democracies. Something wrong is also happening with the freedom of the individual. On one hand, we, the citizens of democratic countries in Europe, may claim that we have more freedom than ever before. On the other hand, after taking a closer look at the voter – the most crucial person in any democratic system – this whole issue looks less straightforward. Voters believe that their influence on reality is weaker and weaker – this view is clearly visible in EU opinion surveys. This cannot even be changed by fairly efficient institutions, like democratic elections and constitution. There are many countries – Russia being the best example – where “democratic” institutions are used not to increase citizen participation, but just the opposite – to exclude them from the decision making process.

I cannot fully agree. Firstly, democracy has never been working perfectly – therefore I do not fully understand the difference between its state now and before. Secondly, there is no lack of critical voices today – many of the voters may be classified as critics of democracy…

Obviously many people are suspicious about democracy. Especially after the 20th century we are afraid of the sharp divisions that it creates, together with its lack of effectiveness. We are also afraid that political polarization will lead to totalitarianism. The main difference lies in the fact that people do not feel that their choices actually mean anything. Therefore voter turnout becomes lower and lower. The only three social groups which are still willing to vote are the poor, the unemployed and the young – the groups that nowadays often overlap each other. Taking into account the mutability of a young person’s world view, it means that the times we live in are completely unpredictable.

But this is also an era of mobility and online communication. So we can just forget about personal freedom?

I can see a certain paradox here. Today an individual is much more powerful. We are better educated, we have access to information and we have freedom of movement. We can use social media which allows us to influence, by means of a single post, the changes taking place in our country. The costs of political organization have never been so low. The problem is that we are under low pressure and do not want to form long-term coalitions. Stronger individuals do not necessarily bring about stronger cooperation. And a group of Facebook friends cannot replace community.

Why not?

Imagine that you are the kind of person who wants to change your living conditions. You have a lot of ways to effect this change. You can be active online and form a social movement. You might do this via the politics pages in “Kultura Liberalna.” But you can also pack your bag and move abroad to earn money in, let’s say, Great Britain. What would you do?

The same thing I do now – work in “Kultura Liberalna”…

Sure. However, a huge array of possibilities, some of which are less time-consuming, means that many people will not try arduously to change the situation here, but will simply go abroad. New ways of working and new living conditions really can lead to rapid change. But civic actions now are like the joke about three samurai strolling the streets of Sophia. When somebody asks them who they are they answer: “We are the seven samurai.” “But why are there only three of you?” “Because we couldn’t find more people!”. Although the number of people striving for a change now is critical, most of them choose the option of leaving home rather than reforming it.

Let me return to your argument about the decrease in voter turnout. I am not sure whether voting per se is such an important indicator of a democracy’s quality – especially as you said that such classic democratic institutions are used even by the likes of Vladimir Putin. There are other indicators, such as the number of civic groups and intensity of their activities, the ability to express one’s opinion or criticism of the authorities…

I do not claim that the voter is the only actor that sets democracy in motion. Of course we would all want the voter to be more than just a head of the country’s human resources department who makes a decision to dismiss an employee or to prolong his contract… But today our participation in elections and referenda is limited to legitimising decisions that have already been taken. The problem lies in the fact that the voters turning away from ballot boxes do not step into vacuum. Social media are teeming with pages advertising radical organizations which lure the undecided with dulcet tones. The lower number of voters poses a danger of plunging the country into political extremism.

Now I would like to ask about something only seemingly different. If the citizens do not exert pressure on the authorities, is there any chance of politicians initiating the necessary reforms by themselves?

Only a small one. In the 1990s we still had reformers like Leszek Balcerowicz. They came and said: “here is a plan that can solve all the problems. Let’s keep society out of it, we will fix everything by ourselves.” Such people generally considered their dramatic unpopularity a measure of their success. Balcerowicz and those like him had a feeling of making something important. Today politicians act in a completely different way. They come and say: “here is a plan which may not be the best, but nothing else can be done. So if you do not like it, you can change us during the next elections.” Such plans are supported by nothing more than a lack of alternatives. It results in total depoliticisation of the political discourse. We either talk in categories of economic efficiency, or plunge into truly sanctimonious fixation.

What will the consequences be?

First of all, complete delegitimacy of political institutions. Everyone still believes that something like complete transparency may become a new source of legitimacy. I am thinking here about the possibilities offered by communication techniques and the fact that politicians these days live in a fishbowl. Unfortunately, transparency is mostly useless. We will know what the prime minister and his ministers do after they close the doors to their apartments – so what? Transparency does not suit either the legitimacy of the initial type, nor the legitimacy through effects. The first type has a lot in common with active citizen participation. It seems on the surface to be close to transparency, but it in fact mostly concerns procedures and information flow, not genuine strengthening of participation. On the other hand, legitimacy through effects is connected with our standard of living and the degree of satisfaction with our lives. If we as citizens feel that we work below our qualifications and earn less than we deserve, transparency will not help much.

So if the condition of democracy is that bad, why then are authoritarian countries like Russia or China so keen to be perceived as democratic?

It is very simple. Democracy is the only form of government which does not require you to deliver tangible results in order to retain the support of your voters.

So in the worst case scenario I lose the elections, disappear for 4–5 years and then return…

Not only this. If you rule an authoritarian country you have two options. You either raise salaries of your subjects or put them in jail. You can also try and mix these two options – and that is what most authoritarian country rulers actually do. Such things happen in China, where the authorities are extremely scared of the slowdown in economic growth. Democracy is a paradise for ineffectual politicians. From time to time a bad decision leads to a crisis – but as this system does not send its politicians to jail, no one is left to care.

But things can function like that only in times of prosperity. When the economy is declining and the ineffectual politicians you mentioned have run out of reform ideas, unthinkable opportunities arise. Who knows whether the radical nationalist Geert Wilders, now the leader of the third-largest party in the Dutch Parliament, will become the prime minister in few years time…

This is another feature of a depoliticized political stage. In today’s Europe no one fights the populists any more. Everyone tries to domesticate, normalise, divide or corrupt them. You no longer start an ideological battle, but rather tell the voters that populists are citizens like everybody else. No one says “listen, these guys are extremely dangerous.” So the voters may answer: “you said that you can be replaced, so here you are, and today 60 percent of us vote for the Jobbik party.”

Does it mean that the Europeans have forgotten what the radical political sympathies can lead to?

For some time after the war people thought that political passions may be replaced with the love for money and the good life. The problem is that prosperity is never endless. Passions are now back in the craziest of manners. People were not allowed to discuss and veto the EU budget. They were left to quarrel about facts. Global warming being the finest example here. This depoliticisation of the public debate pushes everyone into the politics of identity.

Can we ever return to true politics?

I do not think so. Some time ago, the state was the entity that forged community. It cannot now be replaced by Facebook. When you look for friends in social media, you usually choose people that you have something in common with, right? The state made all sorts of people join the community – so they had no other option but to find a common modus vivendi. I want to say something politically incorrect. The current problems of Europe are a side effect of its greatest success: lack of war. Do you know that British soldiers who died during the First World War were much more likely to come from the middle class than from the working class? We used to say that nothing is certain but death and taxes, but now only the taxes are left. A few dozen years ago the survival of a country depended on its citizens’ will to sacrifice their lives for their country. Now mandatory military service has been abandoned. Today we have only standing armies or drones. A citizen with a grenade has been replaced by a citizen with an iPad. I am not so certain that these weapons are equally powerful.