Has the very foundation of modern democracy been superseded without anyone noticing? Columnist Nicolas Demorand of France’s Liberation warns that democratic politicians have a new master – and it isn’t the constitution or the voter.
For Liberation, Nicolas Demorand starts out this way:
Executive, legislative, judiciary: political philosophy teaches that a democratic state is based on the separation of these three powers, but also on the counterbalancing dynamic that each exerts on the other two, with no one power watching itself. This old paradigm has been swept away by the financial crisis. The last three years, with all their ups and downs and breathtaking tempo, have shown how obsolete this basic structure has become.
Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel, with great pomp and self-satisfaction, announce their projects for Europe. Just a few hours later, a rating agency makes them look ridiculous by placing the eurozone under a negative credit watch. The founding structure of democracy is now being replaced with a new and more brutal economic one. With nothing to counterbalance or regulate it, this now controls the others and imposes its own laws.
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