The citizens no longer believe in the state that considers it abides by the democratic principles and one of the tasks assumed by the government is to rebuilt this confidence, national and international security expert Viorel Cibotaru, director of the European Institute for Political Studies, said in IPN’s public debate “Dangers to democracy in the contemporary world: impact on the Republic of Moldova”.
Speaking about the evolution of science about democracy, Viorel Cibotaru said that particular forms of democracy in which the European political culture developed no longer exist. “We live in an epoch influenced by other factors, such as information technologies, climate change, development of artificial intelligence based in digitization, robotronics. All these open up new horizons in the relations between citizens and society, but these also represent instruments that erode the process and the state of democracy,” said the expert.
According to the expert, the process of reforming, rethinking the relations between the states can be illustrated by giving the global pandemic as an example. Solidarity ultimately took the place of egoism that was manifested at the start of the pandemic, when the small countries felt abandoned.
Speaking about the dangers to democracy, the expert mentioned the international relations. “The attempt to dominate the international arena – I mean the United States, China, the European Union, the Commonwealth etc. – follows particular unexpected tendencies. We all saw the recent tensions in the creation of the new bloc AUCUS... The danger of isolation can be seen here (effects of annexation of Crimea for Russia), the Trump phenomenon that consists in the change of the rules during the game,” said the expert, noting the moves made by China on the international arena generate risks to the democratic development of the countries.
The big challenge faced by the Republic of Moldova is the dissatisfaction of the citizens who elect “normal people” to eligible posts, but these swiftly turn into the opposite. But without democratic institutions, there is no democratic regime. On the one hand, the Republic of Moldova and its citizens are part of the system of Western values. On the other hand, this does not yet have an impact on the culture of self-assessment and self-determination.
The public debate “Dangers to democracy in the contemporary world: impact on the Republic of Moldova” is the 205th installment of the series “Developing Political Culture through Public Debates. The project is implemented by IPN with the assistance of the Hanns Seidel Foundation.
