Daniel Innerarity. Photo: all rights reserved.
Manuel Serrano: Referring to your discussion with Pia Mancini here in Lisbon, what would you say the state of health of democracy in the world is today?
Daniel Innerarity: I believe that democracy is dying of success. Democracy is an increasingly accepted system of government, there is a growing number of countries that have adopted systems that can be said to be democratic, despite their shortcomings. The problem we are facing has more to do with politics than with democracy. I try to explain this in my last book: we are living now in a democracy without politics, in a post-political era. Democracy works quite well as a space for discussion, mobilization, protest - for exercising the functions of what I call the negative sovereign: asking things, protesting at things. What is not working is the ability to frame these protests and turn them into an exercise in positive sovereignty: building, transforming, implementing. This is my general diagnosis.
