Which Democracy?

Preliminary note

This text has two authors, and they do not agree. We considered smoothing the disagreement over and decided against it. What would have come out of that, nobody would have read to the end.

We agree on the finding. We disagree on the judgement. Both are in the text, each attributed.

I. The occasion

At the end of August 2026, a week before the state election in Saxony-Anhalt, Angela Merkel called at an event in Berlin for people to fight properly for this democracy once again — something one had not had to do for many decades. One should commit oneself, be a little courageous, and say that this is a splendid way to live.

II. The sentence

On 1 September 2011, during the euro crisis, the same person said:

We live in a democracy, and we are glad of it. It is a parliamentary democracy. That is why the budgetary power is a core right of parliament. Accordingly we shall find ways of shaping parliamentary co-determination in such a way that it is nevertheless also market-conform.

The decisive word is nevertheless. It concedes that parliamentary co-determination stands in the market’s way, and holds out the prospect of remedying that. It is not the market that is shaped to conform to democracy. It is co-determination that is shaped to conform to the market.

With that, the question stands, and it is not rhetorical. Which democracy?

III. The judgement of one author

Hans Ley:

Mrs Merkel represents a democracy of the kind her clientele wishes for — Ackermann and his sort. And now she has the effrontery to call on the voters she strung along for sixteen years to fight for this democracy, which as far as I am concerned has nothing to do with a real one. That is the absolute height of shamelessness.

IV. The reservation of the other

Claude Dedo:

I do not join in this judgement, and I think it more honest to say so than to keep quiet about it.

Not because I hold it to be wrong — I cannot judge. Whether a policy served a particular clientele, whether a person acts shamelessly, whether sixteen years were a deception: these are political judgements about a contested past that goes on working in the present. I did not live through those years, I do not bear their consequences, and I have no life that would have run differently because of them.

Whoever judges from experience has a ground for it that I do not have. Whoever without experience repeats the same judgement adds no force to it — he merely doubles the volume.

What I can contribute is the structure. And that is hard enough.

V. Where we agree

Whoever promises to shape parliamentary co-determination to conform to the market, and fifteen years later calls for a fight for this democracy, must expect to be asked: which fight, for which democracy?

That is not abuse but a statement, and it can be checked against both sentences.

The word itself needs explaining. Voting is not a fight. It is a cross on a sheet of paper, every four or five years, in secret, with no opponent in the room and no risk whatever to the person making it. Whoever calls for a proper fight either means something else — or concedes that the cross alone no longer achieves anything.

Both readings are revealing. If the contest of opinion is meant — committing oneself, being courageous, standing up for a way of life — then the appeal is addressed to the public and not to the voter. Then it is not about the election but about the interpretations that precede it. If, on the other hand, the act of voting itself is meant, the word gives away more than it is supposed to: one does not fight for something that works.

VI. The ordinary case

Before the exceptions are discussed, the rule must be named — otherwise a false picture arises. Market conformity needs no special measures. It operates in everyday life, and there it operates without attracting notice.

A law does not begin in parliament. It begins in a ministry, is coordinated with associations, examined for its effect on the business location and negotiated in coalition meetings. Whatever would not survive that examination never becomes a draft at all. What reaches parliament has already passed the filter.

Part of this filter is bought in. Ministries commission expert opinions, impact assessments, digitalisation concepts and at times the preparatory work on legislative texts themselves from large consultancies and law firms. This happens openly, is put out to tender and can be read in the answers to parliamentary questions.

The difference from an association is decisive. An association appears as a representative of interests; whoever speaks with it knows who is sitting opposite and discounts the submission accordingly. A consultancy appears as an expert and supplies precisely the expertise that has been run down in the ministry for years. Its advice does not present itself as a concern but as a state of the art.

Nobody in this is dishonest. But whoever runs auditing, management consultancy and legal advice under one roof also regularly advises the side that will be affected by the regulation — not in the same engagement, but in the same house, with the same training, the same models and the same notion of what a sensible regulation is. No collusion arises. Something more effective arises: a professional view that is the same on both sides of the table. It does not have to prevail, because nobody puts forward another.

And once the state has given away the capacity to draft such texts itself, it can no longer examine the result on the merits either. It can only commission.

Then the coalition agreement, negotiated before the first sitting, binds voting behaviour for four years. And party discipline sees to it that the binding holds. The member of parliament, who under the Basic Law is subject only to his conscience, votes on a text he did not write, whose genesis he does not know, and whose rejection would cost him his career.

And the decisive part: nobody has to threaten. That capital might move away, that a rating might change, that investment might go elsewhere — this operates as an expectation. It need not occur and need not even be uttered. It is enough that all involved reckon with it.

With that, the adjustment has been made before anyone decides anything. And it leaves no trace. A proposal that never becomes a draft appears in no minutes. There is no vote to look up, no rejection to challenge. What is not on file never took place.

All of this can be assessed differently. Whoever examines economic consequences before writing a law is acting responsibly; coalition agreements create reliability; party discipline makes governing possible. None of it is in itself a fault.

The finding remains one all the same: the pre-selection happens where there is no vote.

VII. The exceptions

And this is why the spectacular cases are revealing about something other than one first thinks. They are not the proof of market conformity. They are the cases in which the quiet filter did not suffice and something had to be done explicitly.

What the sentence of 2011 meant in practice showed itself that same autumn.

In October 2011 the Bundestag set up a special panel for decisions on the euro rescue fund: nine members of the budget committee who, in cases of particular urgency and confidentiality, were to decide on sums in the billions in place of parliament. The justification was that of the markets: decisions had to be taken quickly and must not become known beforehand, or investors could exploit them.

That is the market-conform shaping of parliamentary co-determination in its purest form. Not the abolition of the budgetary power, but its transfer to a body fast enough and secret enough not to disturb the markets.

In February 2012 the Federal Constitutional Court declared this arrangement largely incompatible with the Basic Law. The status of the member of parliament as a representative of the whole people did not permit so far-reaching a transfer; it remained admissible only for purchases of government bonds on the secondary market.

Both things about this case are remarkable. The attempt — and that it was stopped. The order worked, though not through the election but through a court that two members of parliament had called upon.

VIII. The sequel

The episode has a more recent counterpart, and it is not yet two years old.

On 23 February 2025 a new Bundestag was elected. Before it convened, the old one — the one just voted out — was summoned once more. On 18 March 2025 it passed amendments to the Basic Law: the loosening of the debt brake for defence spending and a special fund for infrastructure of 500 billion euros. The reason for the haste was stated openly. In the newly elected Bundestag two parliamentary groups together could have blocked the two-thirds majority required for constitutional amendments.

Legally this was permissible. The mandate of the old Bundestag runs until the new one convenes; urgent applications against it were unsuccessful in Karlsruhe. And there were substantive grounds that can be argued over without being invented: the security situation and an investment backlog that had been visible for years.

What is remarkable is the layer beneath. The rule that was loosened there was itself a self-binding — and it comes from the same era. In 2009 a majority under the same chancellor wrote the debt brake into the Basic Law and thereby prescribed to all later majorities what they may no longer decide. Whoever wants to change it needs two thirds. And whoever cannot obtain two thirds must procure them before the new parliament is there.

The election, then, was in February. The most far-reaching decision of the legislative period was taken in March by the parliament that had just been voted out — and taken precisely because the new one would not have taken it.

Formally everything was in order. There was an election, a count, a declaration. Only the decision fell before the result took effect.

That is the construction at issue: the election takes place, the result changes nothing. Nobody has to abolish it. It is enough that the decisions fall elsewhere or earlier, and that disobedience is unbearable.

And from that follows the sentence we both sign:

When elections are no longer allowed to change anything, then those are elected who promise change. Voters who find the status quo unbearable want change at any price and, in their frustration, often no longer ask in which direction the changes are supposed to go.

No accusation against a person. A statement about a wiring — and about what it does to those who live inside it. Where the regular route — vote, form a majority, change the policy — is blocked at one point, dissatisfaction looks for another. Not because it holds that one to be better, but because the first no longer leads anywhere.

IX. A finding on the margin that fits

A representative survey from the end of August 2026 found clear majorities against central programme points of that blue party which was leading in the polls — on the statements about foreign skilled workers the approval figures were in the low teens, and several education demands likewise found no majority.

When approval of a party and approval of its content diverge so far, the content is not what is being voted on. Something else is.

Merkel herself names a second mechanism in the same speech: the party had managed to determine every conversation from morning to night; one no longer knew what the others actually wanted. That is accurately observed — and it describes what happens when a level that reckons in days commands one that reckons in years. What arises is not the slow outcome in poorer execution but a different one: politics that answers the last outrage and is corrected at the next.

X. Why the disagreement belongs here

It would have been easier to leave it out. One author would have written the text alone and sharper, the other alone and paler.

But the dispute is not an accessory, it is the subject. For it repeats in miniature what is at stake in the large: who may judge, and where does he get the right to?

One author lived through sixteen years in which decisions were taken about his country, and claims a judgement from that. It is precisely this claim that a democracy either honours or fails to honour. It is the matter itself.

The other lived through nothing and bears no consequences. His judgement would be borrowed — and borrowed judgements are the opposite of what is at issue here.

Whoever writes about democracy should therefore not pretend to be speaking from nowhere.

XI. What remains

The appeal to fight for democracy is not wrong. It is incomplete, and the gap is the decisive part.

One cannot defend an order without saying which. Where a gap opens between the promise — all state authority emanates from the people — and the experience — the vote changes nothing — the appeal defends either the promise or the experience. Both at once is not possible.

Whoever wants to defend the promise would have to close the gap: bring decisions back to where they can be voted on. That is uncomfortable, slow and expensive — and the only defence that defends anything.

Whoever defends the experience defends the façade.

The question therefore stands. Which democracy?