Developing democracy from a psychological and systemic perspective: Hypotheses about unconscious connections in our society

Abstract

In a transdisciplinary and interdisciplinary research project of Mehr Demokratie e. V., we brought together representatives from civil society, politics, business and science, and studied democracy using the method of system constellations. The information obtained in the constellations was interpreted with the help of a newly developed method for qualitative analysis. As the outcome, we developed hypotheses about democracy in its depth and possible courses of action for its further development. The hypotheses deal with the essence of democracy and its interaction with institutions and authorities, the self-image of the elected, their relationship to the electorate, and democracy as a process. The article would like to invite the readers to feel their own resonance with the presented hypotheses and ideally be food for thought as to how the readers might use their skills to contribute to the development of democracy.