Craig Calhoun's interview

Today's democracies and indeed democracy in general are facing big challenges. Two kinds, in my opinion. From inside, we face deterioration in many of the institutional conditions for democracy, in the support systems for people's daily lives. So when you are losing your community, you are losing your job, you are confronting basic issues about the future of your children, you want immediate solutions. And if these are not available, then this generates distrust or cynicism or depression. All of these are challenges for democracy, because democracy needs citizens who are desiring to work together to solve problems, to meet challenges. And so inside, we have a kind of degeneration of democracy. We've lost a lot of the support systems. And as a result, we have polarisation, we have failure to take necessary action. But also, externally, the world has changed and democracies have to step up to this changed world. We know about climate change, and there are questions about whether democracies can effectively mobilise to meet the challenges of climate change. But also, war, with Russia's invasion of Ukraine and a reorganisation of the whole of political economy in the world creates constraints on democracies and new challenges, externally from authoritarian governments, but also from the economic and technical systems that organise so much of life that people don't feel they have a democratic choice. I am worried that many in the younger generation don't have the kind of foothold in the long term future in society that encourages democratic participation. So there are young people who are absolutely the leaders on almost every issue; climate change, as you suggest, but also in peace, in campaigns for environmental justice, for changing the economy, to be more supportive. So there's no question that young people are simply cynical, they are leading, but they are not convinced that the existing democratic institutions are actually working very well to meet these various goals. And so they are pushing us — I think, helpfully— to try to ask the hard questions about these institutions. But, some of them are also deciding, "well, it doesn't work, what can I do?" Yes. I don't want to say there is a silver lining that outweighs the absolute huge humanitarian disaster and the violation of the sovereignty of a democratic country. So this is a disaster, first. But, the West has unified more in response to the disaster than was expected and the West is the heartland of democracies, so this is helpful. Citizens in most of the Western democracies have joined in the demand that their governments do something. Now, there are qualifications to this. First, not all democracies are Western, and there are many that have abstained from efforts to limit the Russian aggression. Second, there is a kind of rush to think about this in old terms, like the Cold War, "we are the free world and there's the unfree world", and have this opposition. And even to think that maybe it would be good to have a war, "we should be sending more military to Russia", and all that. So I worry that there is a kind of surge of anti-Russian opinion that could be dangerous. But in addition, finally, I think the question is still before us whether this will be a moment for the rebuilding of democracy or just the reassertion of our identity.