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Will Stringer: Welcome back to Developing Ideas podcast, with me, your host, Will Stringer. If you're new to the podcast, Developing Ideas is all about inspiring new thinking within the student movement. Developing Ideas is hosted by NUS Scotland, and we'd love to hear your thoughts on the podcast by tweeting @NUSScotland. In this episode, we look at the ways to approach the future of democracy, and why thinking about the future of democracy is important right now.

 

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Will Stringer: Hello and welcome to Paul [Jorgenson? 00:00:40], from Das Progressiv Zentrum, an independent think-tank in Berlin, and today I have the joy to talk with Paul about the future. So we're not gonna be gazing into our crystal balls, or reading tea leaves. Paul is a member of the team at DPZ that deliver some amazing work on the future of democracy. This is a really fascinating time to be recording this. Over the weekend Biden Harris were elected as President and Vice President of the United States, and throughout that election, there was this fascinating focus on democracy and the idea of democracy being on the line. But, you know, let's start with some of a simpler question than what’s happening in the US, which is a complex all in its own forum, so Paul, it would be great if you could introduce yourself, tell listeners a little bit about the project that you work on, and how you came to be interested in the future of democracy.

 

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Paul Jorgenson: Hi Will. Thanks a lot for having me. Yeah, my name is Paul, and as you said I work [sound cuts out 00:01:45-46] tank Das Progressiv Zentrum, which obviously translates to The Progressive Centre, and our mission basically is to promote progressive policies, here in Berlin but also in Europe and North America, and the [sound cuts out 00:02:03-04] mostly through strengthening networks of progressive actors across Europe. And in that field, one of our focus points is the future of democracy. And as you said, what we find is that a lot of the time we are dealing with defending the status quo, so defending liberal democracy, like we did in the US election now too, and we are very relieved that Joe Biden won, but at the same time, we also need to spend a lot of energy, and more energy, we believe, on developing future visions of our democracy and our societies, of how they should look like in the future, and I think we have spent too little time on this in the past years. And this is what we try to do in our program, with a variety of formats and projects. One of them is the [inocracy? 00:02:57] conference, yearly conference, where we talk about the issue of democratic transformation, so how can we design and foster policies in the democratic manner that can actually overcome the transformative challenges that we are currently facing. And the title of this year's conference was 'Bringing the Future Back to Democracy', and it has this very idea at its core that we need new and very tangible normative images of our future societies.

 

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Will Stringer: Yes, that’s fascinating, especially, yeah, what you touched on about how often it's been, especially in the last few years, I’d say it's a lot of around defence of democracy, and trying to, I suppose stem the democratic recession, which is often talked about, which, if listeners aren’t familiar with, it's I suppose this idea of you are - democracy... the democracy worldwide is under a recession after a booming years with from the kind of 1970s to 90s, particularly over I think the last 10-15 years. So even pre-Trump, [definitely? 00:04:20. So I wonder - so why do you think... we facing a lot of different problems across the world, you know, you’ve got climate disaster, you’ve got mass poverty, and I wonder why you consider the future of democracy being really important or essential to the now that we... that we're in?

 

Paul Jorgenson: Yeah, I think that’s a great question. I think you’re absolutely right, it almost seems a a bit peculiar to talk about the future so much when we are in the midst of a crisis, with the global pandemic right now for instance. I mean we are both sitting at home, I guess, and doing our best to keep infections low, and I think rightly so, and I think that the pandemic shifts our attention to the here and now, is very important, but at the same time history has very much shown us that crisis can also be a window of opportunity. I mean if you look at the example of the European Union for instance, which sort of raised from the ruins of World War II, and if decision makers at the time hadn’t been wise enough to sort of... stand behind this idea which had to be very utopian at the time, right, of a united Europe, we would be in a very different situation now, and we would also be much less resilient in dealing with the current crisis. I mean you can make the same argument for the World Health Organisation, right, all these institutions that we have right now, especially the transnational, international ones, sort of were born in times of crisis. And I think that shows quite well that how we think about the future also very much determines how we act today. I mean, take the example of a prepper, for instance. If you believe that the catastrophe, the apocalypse will happen tomorrow, you obviously prepare for this today by buying all that stuff that you need in that instance, or if you are a determinist, and you believe that there’s nothing you can do about the future, it's set anyway, then you’re not gonna act on shaping it today, right. And this is why I think it's quite essential that we talk more about our different conceptions of the future, because they help us to understand how we act today, and how we should act today. So I think it's a very essential democratic task to do that, because if we only think of the future as sort of a linear and necessary continuation of the recent past, we sort of lose track of the sense and meaning of politics, right, because politics and especially democratic politics is about collectively deciding which version of the future should actually come about. And that’s why even, or especially in times of crisis, I think it's very important to think about the long-term future. And let me maybe add this, I mean we have this discussion a lot whether authoritarian systems are actually better at thinking long-term, very long-term, and there’s quite an interesting also empiric... research on this, that this is actually not the case. That’s the intergenerational justice index, that very clearly shows that democracies perform much better when it comes to long-term planning. So I think we can also be a bit more confident about the fact that democracies, even though they work in 4-year or 5-year circles, actually quite good in long-term thinking and including the future in our actions today.

 

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Will Stringer: Yeah, that’s fascinating. I was listening to something recently, which was talking about the - you know, economic development and, within democracies versus authoritarian regimes, and you know, the... your authoritarian regimes both represent some of the highest growth and lowest growth areas, but that within a few years, the highest growth can become the lowest growth countries, and so democracy not only is a stabiliser, but it's economically maybe a... better at preparing for crises, and preventing those crises from happening. I wanted to touch on what you were talking about with sort of different ways of thinking about the future, and I wonder is there any - what are, I wonder if you could come into a bit more detail about that?

 

Paul Jorgenson: I think first of all what’s interesting to notice that the far right, published authoritarians, have been very good at this, at developing a clear idea of the future. Although of course their vision of the future is sort of the re-installation of sort of an imaginatory past, right, of a homogeneous people that has a collective clear will that just needs to be translated by politics. But I think the - it's important to note that they have been very good at this, and that progressives have sort of struggled to do that. But I think, over the past years, especially with Friends for Future, a movement that has been very strong in Germany, where I work and live, but also with... other climate movements, the idea that the future will just continue in this very set way that we're in now has sort of also been questioned in progressive fields. And I think what we did in our work is we tried to conceptualise 3 sort of ideal types of how people in the left liberal spectrum think about the future. And I mean these are only ideal types, but they help to sort of structure our thinking about the future. One of these groups is the so-called collapsologists. They believe that our current way of living and working and producing is doomed to fail, and our civilisation as we know it will certainly collapse. The only thing that we can do now is make sure that we are resilient in handling this collapse, so that’s a very bleak, dark idea of the future. And then on the other end of the spectrum, we have what we call the progressivists. They believe that over the past decades we have reached unprecedented progress, and if we identify the factors that actually enabled this progress, and continue working on them, everything will turn out even better in the future, so it's sort of the idea that identifying what’s working and continuing this in the future. This is of course a very bright and optimistic way of looking at it. And then in between I would say we have what we call the transformationists. They think that it can get better in the future, and we can overcome the challenges of climate crisis, for instance, but in order to do that we have to fundamentally change the way our economies work, our institutions work. And this is sort of in between, right, it's sort of a grey view on the future where it very much depends on our actions, today. And I think one question is which of these conceptions of the future I the most realistic one, which is the most empirically founded one, but also which is the most constructive one, right? Which way do we have to act in order to move towards a more sustainable and a more just future. And of course, it can also be a combination of the three, and it very much depends on the policy area that we're talking about.

 

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Will Stringer: Yeah, definitely. I think maybe listeners like me can recognise themselves in depending on different, as you say, by policy area or area of work, and can feel differently about different areas. I think sometimes, especially around climate justice, I can sometimes feel incredibly, like a more collapsologist frame of mind, whilst with the context of the pandemic, I think most of the time I feel a bit more like a transformationist, actually, that things can and should transform. So... but I wonder, at the moment considering the pandemic, how do you - what do you feel is the most dominant narrative at the moment that we have to grapple with?

 

Paul Jorgenson: I think this will be... at least in Germany, also the decisive question in politics. We have general elections coming up next year, and I think there’s one camp which is mostly the Green party, but also the Social Democrats, that believe that we can use this crisis as an accelerator of the transformative processes that are already happening, be it in the energy sector, or in the car industry sector, you name it. And then on the other hand, on the more conservative side, we have I think the conviction that we need to sort of re-install the status quo ante, so sort of go back to the old normal, versus going forward to a new normal on the progressive side. And I think it will be also very much about the different narratives about this, and it will also come down a lot to physical policy, because I mean we have spent a lot of money on managing this crisis, and sort of dealing with the repercussions of it, but this doesn’t necessarily replace the necessary investment for moving towards a carbon-neutral economy, for instance. So I think it will be very important for progressives to find a convincing narrative of why investment in the crisis is particularly important, and will be necessary to further transform. But this of course can be very frightening, right, because it involves a lot of change. And this idea of - that this change is necessary in order to reach stability, this will be I think very important to convey.

 

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Will Stringer: Yeah, and I think that - yeah, it's difficult, I think, for people maybe who... yeah, stability of, the perceived stability of the past as well, and to try and wrestle away from that, because of course there was incredible instability for a lot of people, and for the vast majority, you know, sort of living paycheck to paycheck, with, you know, escalating rent, so you know, the sort of way in which we were living was maybe not working anyway, so as you say, like how can we use this moment to make something, like transform what we have, and had, and our ideas of what we were working for seems... seems really hopeful as well, like full of hope, and I guess that - for me, that seems like one of the most exciting parts of looking and working with this idea of democracy.

 

Paul Jorgenson: Yeah, definitely. I agree, and I think - I find it really interesting what you say that we sort of perceive the past as very stable. I think this is also something that we can learn from the progressivists, right, because they sort of, I think one strength of this conceptualisation of the future is also that they have a more like birds-eye view on the past when they see that we actually have achieved a lot over the last decades, right. I mean, if you look at... issues such as diversity, gender justice, all these things have become much better over the last decades. And I think it's also important to acknowledge this progress on the one hand, but on the other hand of course also not sort of be satisfied with it, but keep on working on it.

 

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Will Stringer: Yeah, definitely. I think I’m gonna pivot slightly towards student associations in particular, because student associations and student unions often need to be thinking about the future from various different angles, and I think those tools of thinking within those personas, or these different archetypes, and that you outlined earlier, is really useful, and - but I think a lot of the time it seems that we work with like changing demographics, so we're thinking of the new generation, which is sort of like coming in, and how that will change things. But I guess I’m interested in how do we move from, organisationally, looking at the future through these kind of patterns of who the student will be, to sort of encouraging collective imagination the future in the now, like how do we encourage people to think about what the - like what the future can be, and as an exciting thing to be, and I do note that this is a very big question, so feel free to like break it down in however way that you'd like.

 

Paul Jorgenson: Yeah, thanks. Well, I think I will try to answer that more on a methodological level, because I think it's very much about tools. I learnt that myself when I started to think and work on this topic of future of democracy, that our sort of imagination muscle, if I may, if I can call it that, is not trained very well. We're not very good at thinking about the future in a tangible, and sort of very image-based way, at least not when we think about positive visions, right. When we think about negative - we think about dystopia, we're very good at that, you can also see that in the... I mean numerous films and literature, that we're very good at that, but when it comes to positive visions, we sort of struggle with that, and I think it's a matter of practice and of tools. We are writing on a paper currently, that stands in relation to the conference, to the [inocracy? 00:20:04] conference, and that’s called 'Bringing the Future Back to Democracy'. And what we are doing there, amongst other things, is collect tools of imagining the future. And we tried out different things that range from very analytical things like [back-casting? 00:20:19], where you create a vision of the year 2035 for instance, and then you work backwards step by step what needs to have happened in order for this to become reality. And this can also be supported by very empirical research, of course, because it's a lot about what’s actually possible and likely in the future. But then there are also much more creative ways of thinking about the future, for example we tested the method of world-building, where you use tools of science fiction to actually imagine a completely new world, completely detached from our reality. Which sounds a bit out there, at the beginning, but it actually helps to sort of free yourself of all the barriers and limitations that you have in your thinking, and that can help a lot too. So I think we need to actively engage with these tools, and then try them out, and then of course it's a very... always very much depends on the particular case, which tool works the best. Yeah, but I think this is what helps a lot to practice these tools.

 

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Will Stringer: Yeah, I definitely agree with that. I think it was... I’m trying to remember, it was with Kathi Weeks, sort of her work, who does a lot of thinking around work, and with an interview with her and [Connor Habib? 00:22:01], and they were talking about how sort of difficult it was to conceptualise about like the future in, and the importance of utopia within that, and working towards it, a kind of - both the vision of a world that is different, and also like how can we make that incrementally better, like at the same time? So, I guess, I wonder what some of your hopeful projections of the future, that you have so far, you know, what’s - what are some of the good little bursts of light that we might need, as we - as England enters a second lockdown, and Scotland is sort of working itself out of this with different rules here?

 

Paul Jorgenson: Yeah, another example maybe, of what we tried when we thought about a different future is something that we called vision sprints, and this tool works in the following way, you imagine yourself in the year 2035, and write about an ideal day, like an everyday... sort of like a future diary, where you describe in a very detailed way how your day goes by. And what we saw when we did this is that actually, also the benefits of using digital tools, meeting people via Zoom like we do right now, sort of... very large potential for engaging with people that otherwise would be much more difficult to engage with. Of course we had these tools before, but now that we have to use them, we are sort of actually doing it, and seeing the potential of it. So I think these are things that can put us in a more hopeful mood, but of course doesn’t change the fact that we are in a very difficult situation, because I believe democracy also builds a lot on meeting people, and engaging and having a dialogue, and that’s much more difficult in the times we are living in now.

 

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Will Stringer: Yeah, and I think that there is something - definitely over the last 8 months or so, it's been... really amazing to build sort of international links, you know, the possibilities of just a - of being able to just hop onto a Zoom call with somebody, but of course the prerequisite is knowing the person, or knowing something around those, or having some sort of tool, and I think that potentially an opportunity for student associations is like how can we build those tools of really active internationalisation, or, you know [unclear 00:25:12] to create kind of a broad mindset, and potentially that’s through... through working through democracy, and actually building that collective imagination across borders. It sounds a quite exciting sort of opportunity as well, for organisations which are always looking to do better.

 

Paul Jorgenson: Yeah. Maybe we should think of something like an online Erasmus program, or something like that.

 

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Will Stringer: For sure, yeah. That sounds really exciting. Thank you so much, this is probably all we have time for now, but thank you so much for being on the podcast. Really insightful, and if we'll pop some links in the bio of this podcast, just that you can connect with Paul and the work that the DPZ are doing.

 

Paul Jorgenson: Thank you so much, Will, it was a pleasure.

 

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