Daniel Innerarity reflects in Barcelona on the future of democracy

October 5, 2023

The National Humanities Research Award analyzes the current challenges in the inauguration of the European Capital of Democracy

At the inaugural conference of the European Capital of Democracy, Daniel Innerarity highlighted the importance of rethinking the future of democracy. He warned that the real crisis is not whether democracy will survive, but what future it offers to citizens and how it is linked to their well-being. Innerarity has emphasized the need to make visible the connection between individual interests and public goods to ensure a more egalitarian future.

Last October 5, Daniel Innerarity, prominent political philosopher and National Humanities Research Award winner, inaugurated the European Capital of Democracy which has been awarded to Barcelona and which it hosts from October 2023 to November 2024. public gathered in the Auditorium of the CCCB in Barcelona to hear Innerarity, which addressed critical issues related to the future of democracy and the challenges it faces in contemporary society: "It is not so much about whether democracy will survive, but what future does she already promise us", she stated at the beginning of her presentation and added: "Behind a lot of disrespect for her there is nothing more than a frustrated future. Democracy is a problem not because of democratic radicalism, but because it has lousy expectations for the future, because politics does not offer it a better future."

The philosopher pointed out that Barcelona has been at the center of intense debates about democracy, from the democratic management of conflicts to urban policies and democratic values. Innerarity highlighted its own research into the complexity of society and how to update democratic values ​​in an increasingly interconnected world and in the midst of crises such as the climate crisis and raised a fundamental question: the crisis of democracy does not lie so much in the its survival as in the kind of future it offers. He pointed out that many of the flaws of today's democracies are due to the inadequate future expectations they project. He stressed that a democracy is not attractive if it does not offer a hopeful vision of the future and emphasized the importance of the democratic promise in shaping the desirable future: "We are far from an egalitarian future, we must make it credible that we can have a future better, equal and shared. Democracy is a procedure to make the individual and collective visible."

The speaker noted that the ideas of the past future have become a source of attraction for many people, who yearn for a return to supposedly glorious times. He pointed out the relationship between neoliberalism, nationalism and the idea of ​​recovering a lost past as a worrying phenomenon in current politics: “We differ ideologically because we relate differently to time. The left, I am speaking in general, is concerned with the disappearance of the future, while the right is rather concerned with the disappearance of the past. The left regrets that the past has so much weight in the present, which it tries to counteract with fiscal policy, redistributive policies, or with the idea of ​​a universal inheritance, for example. And the right regrets the opposite and tries, for example, to prevent the past from being reviewed with memory laws. In this context, the new social issue is that of unequal futures".

See here the full conference.

The lawyer and head of international research and advocacy at the Institute of Human Rights of Catalonia, Karlos Castilla, raised some issues such as who can and who must participate in political decisions and put access on the table in the municipal census, who can be registered and who cannot, since it is a form of belonging to the city and the right to vote: "How can we strengthen democracy based on the recognition of political participation? Who does, and who should not participate? Why do we really talk about democracy in cities and, above all, in this idea of ​​a European capital?". To which, Innerarity replied that one of the pillars of democracy, which is precisely the idea of ​​electoral census and who has the right to vote "has become completely out of date". The reality is that others outside our country are intervening here and we are intervening outside (in other countries).” Really the inclusion of others and our presence is absolutely out of the question. The spending ceiling is approved abroad, Mario Monti is imposed in Italy, we will tell Hungary how to treat the judges. And we see this quite naturally. It is not that Europe is an imperfect democracy, but that Europe is an experiment to achieve that in a space where there is a density of interactions and common destinies, there are instances of governance that allow meddling in the affairs of others . And the meddling of others in our affairs. With this, there is an expansion of the electoral census in a spatial sense".

Innerarity also pointed out that we are launching technologies, structures, institutions, infrastructures, and we are destroying the planet in a way that conditions the future of people who are not yet on the census or who have not even been born and do not know what we will leave them "This is about popular sovereignty, how do we assert the interests, the voice of future generations who cannot yet vote. We must provide some mechanism to vote. This has to do with a type of intergenerational justice." He claimed the need for some future commitment similar to the ODS, strategies for the extension of responsibility, "we have to invent this, and there is a part that we are inventing", he said.

Daniel Innerarity's conference was an opportunity to reflect on the future of democracy and its relationship with the city of Barcelona and beyond. His analysis encouraged a critical consideration of how political decisions shape the future we share as a democratic society.

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