Our liberal democracies suffer from a complex political paradox. Societies demand and need deep changes and reforms to guarantee prosperity, sustainability, security, and equity, but democratic institutions find it increasingly difficult to offer and execute them. Geopolitical, economic, technological, social, and environmental changes, coupled with political polarization, are a high-intensity stress test that turns democratic institutions into dysfunctional organizations and systems.
The consequences are well-known: growing discomfort due to the inaccessibility of affordable housing, increasing precariousness and inequality among popular classes, and the economic tension of middle classes. On the other hand, a perception of insecurity and uncertainty about the future due to the impact of technological transformations, the climate crisis, and the loss of optimistic future expectations.
In this dystopian scenario, democracies dissociate from the idea of progress and a reasonably optimistic future, leaving the ground fertile for populisms that offer seemingly simpler and simplistic answers. Democratic institutions come to be perceived as the establishment, generating a serious crisis not so much ideological as one of expectations.
Some insist on reclaiming the center and the status quo as an antidote to the push of populist formations.
The result is the seemingly unstoppable rise of formations with extreme proposals, especially from the far-right, in contrast to the containment or moderation of a right and a left that are perceived as conservative. Faced with this situation, some insist on reclaiming the center and the status quo as an antidote to the push of populist formations. A strategic and tactical error that can seriously wound our democracies. It is one thing to prudently manage the challenges we face, but we need ambitious and daring answers and proposals to transform reality and rebuild the idea of progress while being respectful of institutions, rights, pluralism, and the rule of law.
It must be said loud and clear, we must promote a new democratic radicalism that does not mean shouting louder, seeking external or internal enemies, or questioning democratic rules. To be radical is to get to the root of problems with empathy, courage, and transformative ambition, and not just with grand proclamations and declarations. The housing crisis can be a good example. We are not facing a problem of the real estate market, but a structural flaw of the so-called social market economy. We are witnessing a very serious fracture of the idea of progress that erodes trust in institutions while we apply palliative measures and solutions in an eight to ten-year horizon.
To be radical is to get to the root of problems with empathy, courage, and transformative ambition.
The great collective challenge is to make the present and the future desirable again, but declarative "goodness" has become obsolete. We cannot protect institutions by turning them into dysfunctional organizations or museum pieces. The idea of progress cannot be an abstract concept or an intangible; we need to offer functional and emotional benefits. A project of shared prosperity in which short-term results are perceived.
The idea of progress cannot be an abstract concept or an intangible; we need to offer functional and emotional benefits.
We need to shake off gradualism and bet on a democratic radicalism that may apparently be contradictory but is possible. To be radical in reforms, and institutional in procedures. To change many things without breaking the rules. It is precisely here that institutions can preserve legitimacy, evolve, reform things, and offer results. Democratic trust also largely depends on exercise, and a democracy that perhaps has the capacity to listen, but does not solve or address the main problems that concern society, ends up inexorably weakening.
We also need to review our conception of leadership. I have written several times about the fallacy of the myth of so-called strong leaders. That is, leadership models based on command and order, hierarchy, and confrontation with the adversary. It is a leadership that may appear efficient and quick in decision-making, but it weakens collaboration, distributed knowledge, organizations themselves, and the ability to build transversal alliances. The great contemporary challenges require solid leaderships rather than strong or unchallengeable leaders. People capable of weaving complicities, mobilizing emotions, and having the honesty to recognize that we cannot do it alone, that we need collective horizons and solutions. Leaders who, in addition to proclaiming and activating certain changes, are capable of linking us so that we consider it worthwhile to rebuild the idea of progress together.
The great contemporary challenges require solid leaderships rather than strong or unchallengeable leaders.
Rebuilding the idea of progress is one of the great democratic struggles of the 21st century. Faced with those who offer refuge in an idealized past that will not return, or those who are content to conservatively manage a status quo that cannot withstand the pressure of new political, economic, or technological barbarians, we need to promote and imagine a different future, radically different from the dystopia offered by illiberal forces.
Many years ago, the Belgian philosopher and political scientist Chantal Mouffe theorized and developed on democratic radicalism. Mouffe explained well that democracy should not try to eliminate political conflict, but rather organize it democratically. Today the debate does not lie in a dialectical, intellectual, or political confrontation between moderation and radicalism. The challenge is to deploy a new democratic radicalism that is capable of once again transforming society and offering a project of shared and inclusive prosperity and coexistence against those who advocate for a radicalization that turns the adversary into the enemy and questions democratic institutions and coexistence.
Democracy should not try to eliminate political conflict, but rather organize it democratically.
Reconstructing the idea of progress means recovering the conviction that we can profoundly transform our societies without destroying what allows us to coexist from difference. We must dare to radically change some of the truths with which we have lived in recent decades, but do so democratically with audacity and efficiency.