Czerulf: Is democracy in a crisis? (Part 3 – Political parties)

View at Germany’s parliament: “Reichstag”

I started my little series about democracy in part 1 with some general considerations. In part 2 I spoke about the aim and the importance of the constitution. I then went on to narrate the German constitutional history. We learned that modern Germany is a parliamentary democracy. National, regional and local assemblies are elected by universal suffrage. Now it’s about time to investigate how does the right to vote translate into action?

Czerulf: Is democracy in a crisis? (Part 1 – General considerations)

Voting – essential part of democracy (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I came across recently few articles that identified a crisis of democracy. Some commentators argue that democracy is already a thing of the past and that the Chinese model (which combines an authoritarian political structure with a 19th-century-type capitalism) is the way forward. I will discuss here in the following weeks a number of different aspects to this question. I will take Germany as an example. We start off today with some general considerations.