We can always learn more about the character, and the shortcomings, of modern representative democracies in times of elections. We can learn even more in between, when democratic accountability should actually be exercised. Taken together, we are able to learn what strategies political actors are pursuing to secure or stay in power and how they are legitimising their policy choices. Patterns are emerging however, common to different European Union democracies, indicating a new way of doing politics.
In the recent German elections, Olaf Scholz won on a message of dignity and respect for all workers, under the slogan Respekt für Dich (‘Respect for you’). The ‘you’ to whom this appeal was made was not ‘the others who think they are better’ but those many who felt under-acknowledged or treated with indignity, perhaps by the ‘others’, in modern society. This helped Scholz’s social democrats regain votes from the centre-right CDU/CSU union, rising above party politics.
