Open Mind 2012: With the crisis of the representative party system, a new form of parliamentaryism is required
about the many small and cois crises, the financial and economic crises, the euro crisis and the crises in the nearby and in the Far East, the profound and long term perhaps the crisis crisis sometimes out of the look: the crisis of the representative party system, the parliamentary democracy who relies on political parties.
This crisis is expressed in a creepingly increasing alienation between the people, the demos, and its representatives, the parties organized as a political class,. Not only the membership and the declining turnout are signs of this crisis, including the fact that the actions of the ruling politicians and the parliamentarian is perceived at all levels of the population and in the openness only as a political theater, as a spectacle, from the one While it is affected, but which does not represent its own interests and goals, but completely detached from it in its own, political sphare that one needs, but in the ground is detested.
This gap between the people and his political representation has nothing to do with the lack of qualitaires of political personnel. Rather, their cause is that the parties parliamentarism is based on an idea, which may never really correspond to reality and that today has no real basis more.
The idea of party democracy is uberholt
To delegate political decisions to a few tightly organized parties, which form a parliament that the people will decide by voting over their composition every few years – this form of organizational form of parliamentary democracy is based on a basic idea that no longer meets today’s plural society.
In order for such a parliament to reflect the political interests, wishes, objectives and opinions of the population, they had to be clearly derived in their variety of a few basic settings, for which one such party is then: "Conservative", "ecologically", "Left", "Liberal" and maybe two or three others. The ideas derived from the most diverse policy fields, from the most economic to school policy, from the internal culture to health policy, had to be clearly and largely cross-edged from these few round decisions – and that until each Individual supervisory topic, whether it is energy supply to the military insert in Afghanistan, to the duration of school education to high schooling to the smoking ban in guest institurs or the primal implantation diagnostics.
In order for it to be conceivable that a clear classification works in political groups and camps, politics had to focus on a few, closely related policy fields. But as the listed examples show the opposite of the case: Meanwhile, any question that achieves the consciousness of the public is explained to a political question, politically decided and decided by legal regulation.
In addition, the plurality of society increases and the number of different lifestyles and life situations are increasing. This is a party system that seriously involves a few parties in the political process in the political process and in the interior of the parties and coalitions also on strict discipline and unanimity in almost every single question, principally relieved.
Radical thinking, gradually acting
Who seeks ways from this procedure situation, first requires an idea of an alternative. A readiness for radical rethinking is required, even if one progresses in practice only gradually. Historical arguments that claim that certain ideas in the past had already gone crooked and therefore could not work in the future, do not consider that the future is just different than the past. And who from "Strain" speaks, which do not allow alternatives, a mistake is already a mistake: things do not force, it’s always people who force them because they are in power. But this power will be frugal in a democracy if the legitimacy is lost because the burger can not identify with those you cheated.
Needs a parliament really fractions and coalitions? Their necessity is often funded with specialization, division of labor and the government of the government, which is based on a coalition,. But a government does not regulate the Parliament nor the people, it is intended to govern the administrative apparatus of the ministries and agents, on behalf of Parliament. For this purpose, the parliamentarians must agree on a government team at the beginning of the electoral period, but no one says that a coalition is notative.
Where there is no coalitions, it is also difficult to stream a government just – because even a majority of the parliament had to be organized. If a bundnis of parties breaks, the government does not have to be meaning as long as the majority of parliamentarians – free from any coalition and faction binding – believes that the ministers should continue their work.
Of course, conventional relationships can form itself in a parliament, along which one shares the work. But these do not have to be stable and certainly not be identical for every policy field. A Member of the Expert for Science Policy can, in matters of social policy, can trust the one colleague and adhere to him in the vote and follow it with an ale-political topic of the competence of a completely different colleague.
Of course, it is more difficult in such a system to organize majorities, but that was very good to today’s political burial and regulation. Parliament was then focused on the really central ies of politics and forced goods to ensure that the statutory rules are short and lack of.
The 5 percent hurde falls
In such a dynamic parliament, a 5 percent hurde does not make sense anymore. On the contrary, the more different political parties come to Parliament, which may only be about niches or certain social groups, the better the real diversity of the demos is represented, the better special competences in parliament are represented. In such a party diversity, which then actually a picture of the plural society goods, most burgers also found a party with which they could identify themselves, at least on time.
It seems to be a further way, even if only small things had to be changed at the statutory provisions until such a form of parliamentarism has become reality. Even for the burgers, it is an impertinence to engage in it, because they had to give up their viewer perspective and accompany the political decision-making process much more active.
All parties did well to think about such a radical re-determination of the parliamentary system, of course, which, of course, who started with a fundamental criticism on the existing system. But also the so-called "established parties" Must face change, because if he also brings them a certain loss of power and make some comfort in thinking in thought – only so does not croost the kitt, which ultimately cohesion this society.