[...] 'The basis of a democratic state is liberty . . . One principle of liberty is for all to rule and be ruled in turn'. [...]
[...] Imagine having to develop a system today that would express the will of the people. Would it really be a good idea to have them all queue up at polling stations every four or five years with a bit of card in their hands and go into a dark booth to put a mark, not next to ideas but next to nam…
The equilibrium came to an end as a result of neoliberal thinking, which reshaped public space radically in the 1980s and 1990s. Not civil society but the free market was now the main architect and this applied to countless domains of public life, especially the media.
over the course of the centuries a 'public sphere' emerged, to borrow a phrase and a theory from German sociologist Jürgen Habermas
When the supporters of the American and French revolutions proposed elections as a way of getting to know 'the will of the people', there were as yet no political parties, no laws regarding universal franchise, no commercial mass media, let alone social media. In fact the inventors of electoral-rep…
