#14 Can we regain faith in democracy? - hosted by Sigge Winther Nielsen and Andreas Baumann
A Dane, an American, a German, an Englishman and an Italian walk into a bar. And even though they all come from different democracies, they can probably quickly agree on one thing: They don't really believe in the ability of politicians to solve their problems anymore.
At least that's one of the points in Sigge Winthers Nielsen's new book 'The Puzzle State - How to Govern Wicked Problems in Western Democracies', which has just been published. In it, he takes the temperature of the five countries' democracies through interviews with political actors, ministers, officials and media people from the different countries. And the conclusion is clear:
"There are 100 problems out there and the most important ones like climate or inequality are still being discussed in the political system. But they also get mixed up with cat videos and beheading videos and dillerdolls, and that makes it hard for politicians to focus on what really matters to most people. It's a bit of a boring diagnosis," he says.
The loss of faith in the power of change in the political system is also linked to another discouraging analysis: the majority of people in each of the five countries have no confidence that the world in the future will be better than it is today.
So what do we do?
Fortunately, Sigge Winther does not paint a uniformly gloomy picture. He also has a strong belief that faith in democracy can return so that we don't drown in symbolic politics and bureaucracy.
This is where the title of the book 'The Puzzle State' comes into play:
"Sometimes it's okay to be puzzled, to wonder and get deeper into the problem. The Puzzle State is one that tries to connect feedback from the frontline of society with politicians in Parliament," he says.
Sigge's examples of proposed solutions and political experiments are numerous. He talks about things like basic income, sunset clauses that ensure you can scrap legislation that doesn't work in practice, and a so-called future commissioner to ensure that proposed legislation makes sense for future generations.
Sigge's analysis and suggestions for experiments are elaborated on in the podcast, where he is interviewed by Monday Morning's editor-in-chief Andreas Baumann.