Democracy
What breaks the cycle of radicalization, and who should get to vote? Self-rule is where this council comes alive: Hannah Arendt, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, John Rawls and Franklin Roosevelt, who held a democracy together under strain. Their answers pull apart. The debates below are where you find them.
- Debates
- 34
- Council voices
- 40
- Last debated
- 28 June 2026
The council in action
What would they do about democracy?
Each thinker’s concrete moves, drawn straight from their debates.
HA
Hannah Arendt
Explore Arendt →- Rebuild civic associations in deindustrialised eastern German towns, targeting the atomised communities producing AfD votes.Is the rise of the AfD a threat to German democracy, or a sign that it functions?
- Protect public spaces where citizens appear to each other as equals, before procedural institutions are touched.Is democracy possible without a strong cultural and artistic sphere?
- Fund cultural institutions explicitly as democratic infrastructure, not as aesthetic amenity.Is democracy possible without a strong cultural and artistic sphere?
HS
Helmut Schmidt
Explore Schmidt →- Prioritize exchange rate coordination and monetary policy effectiveness over democratic consultation processes.Can the European Union become both more democratic and more decisive at the same time, and if so, how?
- Reclaim plain political speech on belonging, integration, and economic security in communities mainstream parties have abandoned.Is the rise of the AfD a threat to German democracy, or a sign that it functions?
- Deliver measurable results in written-off eastern towns; suppress nothing, but outcompete the AfD on visible delivery.Is the rise of the AfD a threat to German democracy, or a sign that it functions?
AS
Amartya Sen
Explore Sen →- Build universal access to education and plural ideas as the structural precondition for genuine democratic participation.Is democracy possible without a strong cultural and artistic sphere?
- Protect the public reasoning space that gives elections meaning; treat its strangulation as the first sign of democratic collapse.Is democracy possible without a strong cultural and artistic sphere?
- Publish empirical evidence that democracies sustain coalitions longer and self-correct faster, grounding the values frame in data.How should civil society organizations shift media coverage of Ukraine from military strategy to democratic values and human rights?
LK
Lee Kuan Yew
Explore Yew →- Maintain English as the common civic medium and national service as the shared institution binding all communities.Should governments actively promote a shared national identity?
- Protect surviving minority languages from administrative erasure; do not repeat the Hokkien and Teochew loss.Should governments actively promote a shared national identity?
JR
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Explore Rousseau →- Reduce economic inequality in eastern Germany directly; address the material condition destroying shared civic identity.Is the rise of the AfD a threat to German democracy, or a sign that it functions?
- Strip AfD rhetoric of its general-will claim by rebuilding visible common institutions citizens can identify with.Is the rise of the AfD a threat to German democracy, or a sign that it functions?
- Replace state arts subsidies with funding for common festivals, shared public ceremonies, and civic ritual.Is democracy possible without a strong cultural and artistic sphere?
Browse by topic
Recurring dilemmas
Polarization & radicalization
3 debatesWhat breaks the cycle of mutual radicalization pulling democracies apart?
Elections & the vote
3 debatesWho gets to vote, how, and what makes an election legitimate?
Democratic resilience
14 debatesIs democracy backsliding, and how do you make it resilient again?
- Is the rise of the AfD a threat to German democracy, or a sign that it functions?
- Is democracy possible without a strong cultural and artistic sphere?
- During wartime, should a nation's political discourse give greater prominence to protecting cultural and democratic institutions alongside military defense, rather than letting military priorities dominate the conversation?
- Do Trump's policies and approach to government pose a threat to American democratic institutions?
- Why do societies increasingly frame policy disagreements as existential threats?
- Can the European Union become both more democratic and more decisive at the same time, and if so, how?
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