Democratic Civic Virtue and the Crisis of Parliamentarianism
Abstract
Individual questions of the institutional reforms of the representative-democratic parliamentary system, such as issues of electoral law, party law, and parliamentary law, are frequently discussed. But all these reflections - and this is the principal thesis of this article - must eventually remain without success, if they do not address the preceding basic problem concerning the democratically indispensable conditions of the mental constitution of the active citizen, the „civis“. There, a key role, consciously experienced like a paradox, falls upon the renunciation of the claim to absolute truth of one’s own political convictions with regard to equally „relative-absolute“ claims for validity of others. On this base the psychological presuppositions of a modern pluralistic democracy are discussed, which thereupon are to be institutionalized: e. g. the capacity to compromise, the obligation of state neutrality in religious matters, the renunciation of hate speech, the rejection of „denial of reality“, and of allegedly „finalizing“ ideologies of history.
Keywords
Adoption of perspective | „Auschwitz-lie“ | chance for alternation | coercion of the stronger argument | democratic homogeneity | denial of reality | hate speech | ideology of history | monopoly of truth | parliamentary debate | secularisation | separation of State and Church | willingness to compromise | Perspektivenübernahme | Auschwitzlüge | Alternanz-Chance | Nötigung des besseren Arguments | demokratische Homogenität | Realitätsverweigerung | Hassreden | Geschichts-Ideologie | Wahrheitsmonopol | parlamentarische Diskussion | Parlamentarismusreform | Säkularisation | Trennung von Staat und Kirche | Kompromissbereitschaft