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National interest

Especially in times of international conflicts, it is customary that politicians refer to “the national interest” as a justification for their actions beyond the state borders, commonly named foreign policy. There is a huge literature on the subject, in which the concept of the national interest is useful, (1) because it suggests some higher ranking political goal, (2) because it clarifies and prioritizes a country’s goals, particularly at times of military interventions and (3) because it “arouses the support necessary to move towards a realization of the goals” (Rosenau 1968, Int. Encycl. p.34).
A critical assessment of this concept in international relations should start with the democratic perspective that a country’s government is subject to regular elections, whereby the goals a previous majority had put forward, might substantially change as a new majority takes the lead. Continuation of the same foreign policies is not excluded, but at least subject to revision. In authoritarian regimes the definition of the national interest is probably more stable, because authoritarian leadership does not hesitate to define the national interest in “splendid isolation” from its people.
Overall, the concept appears to serve mainly communication purposes, both internally as well as towards the outside as in communicable foreign policy goals. Conflicts between countries can thus be named and become subject to diplomacy and international treaties. But we have to fill this with substance over and over again as new topics arise like climate change and global warming.

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Interconnected multipolarity

In a very long-term anthropological perspective on the balance of power on the globe, the period that mankind lived on this globe has been characterised by an unconnected multipolarity. People lived in their more or less isolated communities before the Egyptian, Roman, Chinese, Australian, African or Japanese empires and people of the world became connected through new means of transport and communication networks.
In the 21st century the world wide web has broad us closer together and suddenly we realize that unipolarity or bipolarity might be options again through the unipolar dominance in airspace and radio frequencies. Even if unconnected multipolarity has been by far the longest period of mankind, the new developments in international politics resemble more a world of interconnected multipolarity than an American dominated unipolar or bipolar world of the Cold War period until the collapse of the Soviet Union. Stephen Walt (2026) and Raja Mohan (2026) discuss the concept of multipolarity in the same issue of Foreign Affairs (Vol. 105 Nr.2). Whereas Walt emphasises the USA as a “predatory hegemon”, Mohan describes the USA as being tempted and actually currently going it alone in international politics.
The current military image of world politics seems to be dominated by unipolarity again, maybe just before the longer run realities of economic, demographic, financial, trade and productivity developments, already reflected already in such data, take the upper hand again. The spectrum of the unipolar, bipolar, multipolar world privots around multipolarity in the long run, even if bipolar or unipolar intermezzi are part of the historical evolution.
(Image: view of Obzorno-geografceskij globus, Moskau 1994, Stabi Berlin 2026-1)

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Holistic public health

Based on case study in Queensland Australia, Boocock et al. (2026) propose the wider application of holistic public health laws. Due to effects of global warming the local burden of disease may rise due to larger scale floods and subsequent growth of for example mosquito populations that transmit infectious diseases. It will be necessary for societies to understand the processes behind the growth of mosquito populations and what can be done to prevent and protect oneself from the consequences. This is not only an environmental issue, but also an issue of continuous learning across all strata of society. Neighborhoods tend to suffer the same impact of chemicals used or the spreading of diseases like Dengue or malaria. The case study makes a convincing argument about the intrinsic relationship between the social and environmental processes at work. 

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Construction Deconstruction

The application of dialectic thinking invites us to explore the idea of construction at the same time as destruction. The sequential form reminds us that on most construction, deconstruction will follow eventually. This is obvious in case of the life cycle of human bodies or the animal world. On a more aggregate level, empires have been constructed and sometimes centuries later, they have been deconstructed again. Deconstruction may also take form transformation. In such cases major features remain the same, but the new entity is sufficiently transformed to give it a new name. Often it might also be a kind of synthesis of previous generations or cycles of construction and deconstruction. We enter potentially into the field of genetic evolution or genetic engineering. In any case, dialectic thinking is present in many fields of studies. Well worth to explore the potentials as well as limitations of the basic scientific concept. 

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Silence revisited

In most cultures, particularly western ones, we are less and less used to silence. Keeping silent for 1 hour is almost framed as an exercise of meditation. In the presence of other persons silence is often misinterpreted as not being interested or even intelligent enough to contribute to the conversation or discussion. Therefore, the title of the exhibition “Seeing silence”, which rediscovers and honors the paintings of Helen Schjerfbeck. Her Finish, Swedish speaking roots, with a broad European training in the arts, made her an accomplished painter in the impressionist’s tradition with a focus on painting portraits. The catalog from the exhibition (THE MET 2025) gives a great overview of her paintings when silence of her models tell stories. Portraits of women are particularly powerful examples of tranquility, and reading, but also uneasy silence in rocking chairs. The biographical sketch of Helen Schjerfbeck by Dita Amory sums up the vocation as “All I desire to do is paint” (p. 15). Towards the end of the 19th century and the 1st half of the 20th century this meant work in silence and she chose to work on silence as well.  (Image: catalog in library Brussels 2026-2) 

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Chess without Queen

It is perfectly possible to play chess without a player having a queen on the chessboard. This certainly gives an advantage to the opponent, but in case of a lack of an adequate strategy or being overly confident to win, the advantage can be compensated by the party who does not have a queen in the arsenal of weapons. The paper by Lissner & Warden (2026, p.109) on the new way of war following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022-2-24 states that “nuclear weapons have not given Moscow the coercive leverage many assumed they would.” Nuclear weapons hit the civilian population without differentiation the hardest, just as much as taking nuclear power plants as strategic war targets would do. What we have seen so far in Russia’s strategy is to use civil infrastructures of water and heating as targets within Ukraine as part of a kind of psychological warfare against the Ukrainian civil population. The more committed Ukrainian soldiers, even with the lack of a nuclear weapon, seem to hold the line against the Russian aggressor that so far has restrained from the nuclear option, if the Tschernobyl disaster has not been a precursor of a weaponisation of nuclear infrastructure.

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Future Conflicts

Since 2014-2-27 Russia has occupied the Crimean peninsula. This invasion had started with an undercover mission of unmarked soldiers to take full control of Crimea about 3 weeks later. Russia did not officially declare a war, although the intentions were identical to a land grabbing war. The western world did not react much to this violation of international law. Apparently, this contributed to the next cynical “special operation” by the Russian army to fully invade Ukraine on 2022-2-24 in a failed “Blitzkrieg”, a rapid invasion, which attempted and failed to annex the whole of Ukraine. According to Lissner & Warden (2026) the Russian invasion of Ukraine bears 4 lessons for future conflicts: (1) the risk of using nuclear weapons is real, (2) in addition to nuclear options, prolonged and very destructive conventional wars remain an option, (3) escalation thresholds emerge and evolve over the duration of the conflict, (4) allies and partners in war keep adjusting their risk tolerance as well as escalation options. The authors argue from a US perspective and add a practical comment: “The USA cannot go this alone, but should coordinate closely with allies and partners in time before another conflict arises. Multilateralism seems a valid option and even more so as we move into a multipolar power play on the global scale propelled by AI.
(Image: Musée Orsay, Paris – Archer, Bogenspannende)

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Peace and war again

“If you want peace, prepare for war”. This is one of the famous citations from Vegetius an early Roman general. For centuries we have been aware that peace and war are not opposites in a broader sense. Preparation for war can resemble war, if a country’s economy is already heavily turning towards production of weapons and intensifies research in dual use technologies. Political terminologies that shift to a vocabulary using more belligerent language may also be interpreted as a early signs of a shift in balance between peace and and early warnings on war. 4 years of the war of Russia on Ukraine territory have left traces in our vocabulary as well as budgets devoted to the preparation of a defense in Europe.
More countries of the EU state openly what is in their “national interest”, as if they were ready to go to war (Charap & Haukkala 2026) to in case major elements of the national interest were endangered. In going back to Clausewitz’s writing, a long historical line can be drawn from the Crimean War(s) to Putin’s imperialist war of 2014 and 2022 trying to capture Ukrainian territory, irrespective of enormous human losses.
Another lesson from these historical events might be: Let’s not forget to prepare for peace during the hot conflict.

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Short circuit electrification

The electrification of the automotive industries is well under way. However, there is still the resistance of a few warriors from a village called “Gaulle” that fight the imperial forces that dominate these markets. The abundance of cars with batteries and electricity-based traction keeps growing, More utility vehicles shift over to this technology as well. With India and China making significant shifts in this direction, the market has made a significant technological shift until the beginning of 2026. The share of hybrid or solely electric power in cars has risen sharply, but a small segment (10% of diesel engines seems to survive or is only slowly petering out in the coming decade. The publication by Béla Galgóczi (editor) demonstrates the challenges this poses to the companies, their employees and the automotive sector as a whole, as it comprises a large amount of employment and technologies in the traditional supply chain as well. The need for a substantial and costly shift has started, but the downsizing of companies, as electric cars need far fewer pieces than conventional ones, could offer an opportunity, if the skilled employees can be converted to other productive use.
A single sector study offers a lot of “deep” insights into a sector, but the opportunities and openings in other not to distant sectors tend to be overlooked. The European sovereignty in the area of military, standardised technology, which is also still based on many precision and metal components might come as a rescue not only to Ukraine, but to Europe as a whole.

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External-Internal Threat

In a time perspective of at least since the German unification of 1990, we have to reconsider the perception of what constitutes an external versus an internal threat. Prior to the implosion of the Soviet Union and the Glasnost years, the external Russian threat has been transformed across the globe into more hybrid threats coming from internal forces which have been “instrumentalized” by external forces. In an essay by Valentine Faure (Le Monde 2026-2-21) this twist to internal politics has been described as a form of new forms of interference of external forces into European internal political, economic and social affairs. In fact the basic strategy is as old as the famous Trojan horse, but the strategy has been refined and to work over much longer time spans as well as in other scientific applications. Any form of powerful, interested party would rather use the soft power of persuasion than brutal force to reach political objectives. Corruption and buying votes, directly or indirectly, has become a legitimate way in this hybrid or open use of power from the inside of a society than through a more traditional external affairs strategy. The confrontation of the bipolar world made it easy to put emphasis on external military power. A multilateral as well as more multilayered international political arena precludes to some extent the bipolar confrontation as conflicts on several frontiers  increases risks exponentially. In search of other strategies it seems plausible to turn to hybrid as well as disguised external force. Europe and democratic systems in general are more vulnerable than autocratic states, because the belief in an open form of society is part of its DNA. Open societies shall have to sharpen their sensory systems to transformed external to internal threats.

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EU Presidencies Review

There is a turnover at the EU presidency every 6 months. A full cycle of all presidencies takes 13 and a half years as each presidency lasts the same length irrespective of country size. CY 2026 is the current one, where CY does not only stand for “see you” in smartphone slang, but for Cyprus in 2026. The procedure to determine a working program for the Council presidency is well established and unresolved matters keep coming back in regular time intervals. The big overarching topic in 2026 is EU autonomy facing up to new challenges of the multilateral world. In the EU presidencies small countries can showcase their concerns and demonstrate what their preferred topics and proposals of solutions are. It is also a chance to make people aware of why they have been eager to join a political, cultural and economic union in the first place. Already in the founding documents the issue of security and defense were addressed. They are again on the top of the agenda in the enlarged EU. The multi-ethnic and multi- religious experience of Cyprus, a country that has lived through multiple strategic dominations over centuries, can probably teach us a lot about how difficult it is to be autonomous if other more powerful countries have put an eye on your territory. Choose your allies wisely. (Image: exhibits Cyprus at BNF 2026, CY2026EU) 

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Cyprus Aphrodite

The legendary tales about Aphrodite and Cypriote cultural heritage have inspired not only a series of conquerors, but also composers of the romantic period in the 19th century. Somehow in praise of monarchy, Fromental Halevy composed the Opera “La Reine de Chypre”, inwhich the last Queen of Cyprus had to abdicate in the medieval era.  As a formidable example of French opera style, Richard Wagner transcribed it for salon-type recitals for voice and piano. The ballet music by Franz Schubert “Rosamunde, Fürstin von Zypern“ is yet another romantic piece built on the legendary associations with the island and its history. The exhibition “Cyprus at the BNF” in Paris proposes a transversal view across centuries based on their multiple collections. The western bias of what we in the western hemisphere of the world defined as being of interest becomes visible and transparent. The oriental perspective has been complemented by a small selection of exhibits from the Bank of Cyprus Cultural Foundation. A critical perspective on what enters our collections and archives is a great scientific accomplishment, at times when biased views from politicians have become more common again. 

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Time horizons

There is an interesting stream of research in psychology that investigates the future time perspective of individuals. There is a considerable variation across the life span (Katana et al. 2020) where older persons report shorter time perspectives in such studies. At the same time we know that older persons think more about and how to transmit to following generations. Additionally, there exists a less well understood link between shifts in future time perspectives and overall societal, demographic and biological life expectancy. Taken together this allows to discuss  time horizons more generally on the level of social development. In political science it is customary to assume the future time perspectives of politicians to be the next election unless there is ineligibility after repeated terms in office. If politicians start talking about a time horizon of 1000 years like the Nazi-regime in Germany than the time horizon is likely to be abused as an excuse for atrocities in the present or near future. Beware! (Image: Exhibit in « Deutscher Dom » Berlin on NS-State, 2026).

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Exercise and neurons

The neurons in the brain have an active part even in training effects of physical exercise. Morgan Kindel et al. (2026) have accomplished a rigorous test that demonstrates the involvement of brain neurons when mice were exercising repeatedly. Training effects were larger if the neurons of brain cells were involved as well. The cell’s learning ability encodes the experience of exercise and is prepared for a repetition of the exercise. This is roughly what happened in their experiments in my own words. Runners might know the effect that running on track or treadmill uses up less calories than running cross-country where the brain is more challenged to avoid missteps or loss of orientation. However, the latter are different tasks whereas the former experiments demonstrate that the brain is involved in physical exercise even if we do not notice it. Exercise might spur brain plasticity just by doing it. Hence, just do it.  

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Rule and divide leadership

We have known the leadership style, which has been coined as “rule and divide”, at least since the Roman imperial period.  In conquered countries it was a strategy to rule by way of creating divides between peoples or regions within a conquered country. The struggle for power within a country is likely to avoid that a powerful opposition to the occupant can build up. What is well researched in the history of international politics, has also been applied to the realm of management strategies. Anthony Galluzzo demonstrates that the strategies of management often attempt to split the workforce in at least 2 different camps in order to better keep employees and their trade unions under some sort of control. For society as a whole, so-called dual labor market theories have hypothesized the existence of such management strategies since the 1980s. With the labor practices in food and grocery deliveries as well as in taxi services such management strategies are applied again. “Old wine in new bottles”, but still seems to sell and catch on. (Image: extract from Butler Charles, 1637, Monarchia faeminina)

 

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Collaborative Leadership

There are many reasons to praise collaborative leadership. Work climate, learning climate and innovation in teams and organizations benefit a lot. Absenteeism from the workplace is a proven and close correlate of hierarchical leadership styles. The theory and empirical evidence is rather clear in this respect, however the effective practice of collaboration among a leadership team is hard to sustain. Not only the ways to reach leadership positions is mostly rewarding tough elbows on the way to the top, the multiple rounds in the competition for top positions tend to train the toughest strategic  behavior. A return to more cooperation and collaboration appears to be a real challenge for persons that eventually arrive in top management positions in politics or business. Administrative science or organization science deserves much more attention especially if we are moving into the age of multilateral international institutions and multinational corporations and organizations. (Image: Les quatre parties du monde soutenant la sphère céleste, 1872, Musée d‘Orsay Paris).

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Time occult

The passing of time may occult what has happened years or decades earlier. However, archives can do a great job to preserve historical facts that time might otherwise occult. The term of occultation has not only the meaning of making something secret, it can also mean that something is hidden from the public or direct visibility. The latter more obvious perspective has become a fashionable feature from time to time. As early as mechanical clocks existed, the arts and crafts have found ways to occult time in the sense of not distracting people from too much attention to the passing of time. At least at some moments in time, it may be of interest to hidden the time to devote more time to a specific moment or event. In the early 19th century this was a very upper class concept. In the early 20th century people wore closed watches in their costumes. Early 21st century people wear wrist watches that might have the light switched off, albeit being always on and connected. There seems to be an awareness among people that there can be too much attention to the passing of time.   (Image: extract from Claude Galle et Bailly 1819 „L’amitié cache les heures“, Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris).  

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Time in Leadership

We identified already the importance of monitoring in democracies. The same theoretical considerations hold for an analysis of leadership irrespective of the organizational context, be it a government, governmental organization, non-governmental organization, association or private enterprise. In democracies, it is in most cases a constitutional rule that leadership positions are limited in time and it is “best practice” to have clear rules about renewable terms of office as well.
In private enterprises this seems to be of lesser importance, but the issue deserves more close scrutiny, not only by shareholders in case of a shared ownership or stocks. A particular person in the leadership position might be a good match for a company at times of growth or scaling of a start-up, but the same leadership is less likely to be an equally good match for the period of eventual stagnation or shrinkage.
Therefore, as an alternative hypothesis it might be wise to adopt leadership rules similar to filling leadership positions with politicians. Fixed-term and 1 renewal could be worth testing at the leadership level (like in presidential republics, USA or France), even if this does not preclude close monitoring of leadership processes. As a starting point for empirical research, Vogel, Raes, Bruch (2022) offer a toolkit to assess organizational energy and leadership trajectories. Learning from democracies as well as democratic procedures might be a worthwhile leadership model to follow. (Image: ceiling painting in chateau  Vaux le Vicomte)

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Time to prevent

If we take a medical life course perspective, we shall become aware that for each event there shall be a time to prevent it. From a scientific and socio-economic point of view, this is the crucial time to prevent failure of an organ, duration of an illness, death or an otherwise disruptive event. Taking our lung or liver as examples we intuitively know that there is a long time spell during which we have a chance to work on prevention. The monitoring of the early onset of disease is (Ge et al. 2026), potentially, a very cost-saving way as well in addition to avoid humans suffering later on in multiple ways. From a theoretical point of view it will be interesting to “think intervention as prevention” already, rather than the predominant way of intervention “post-hoc”, which means after the onset of disease. This implies a rather complete overhaul of medical research just as much as social research to guide policy makers interested in the “survival” of our social security systems as we know them currently in Europe. (Image is illustration in book on fairy tales: Beckmann in exhibition at Kunstbibliothek Berlin, 2026)

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Time wasted

It is a rather narrow, mainly economically driven, view on time that time can be wasted. Maybe, it is just interpreted as the opposite of „carpe diemcarpe diem“ (make use of the day). In the immediate instance time might appear as not used in a productive manner, but with a longer time perspective in mind, wasted time might happen to have contributed substantially to a valuable outcome. The measurement of time can be done in a neutral fashion like using a digital or analog clockdigital or analog clock. Time wasted, however, is a judgement and attaches a value on a duration. In retrospect, or from a life review standpoint, wasted time may be subject to revision. How much of reading is wasted time? Some reading becomes relevant only at later times during the life course. Just keep wasting time this way. Sing songs like from Honahlei „Where has all the time gone“, there will be long term benefits. (Image: extract from Anna Dorothea Therbusch, Selbstbildnis, 1782, Gemäldegalerie Berlin)

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Medical Life Course

The analyses of the life course have taken individuals as their starting point and linked their life courses to broader societal developments like periods of educational expansion, job growths or periods of high unemployment. Medical life course research has further dis-aggregated the life course of a person into, for example, the life course of human organs.
There is already an established line of research which collects and analyses lung function trajectories. The research starts even before your first “autonomous” breath and typically ends at death, although transplants become feasible. It is helpful to think of those measures lung function trajectories as a life course of lung health, because the air we breathe is subject to many social and environmental impacts. Some we are in control of (active smoking, less so with passive smoking), some others like inner city smog or pesticides inhaled in areas of agricultural production. Work environments play an important role in the life course of the lung as well. Global warming, particularly increases in summer heat, pose additional challenges on the overall aggregate level to lung health trajectories.
Inhale, exhale, … then force your breath out quickly, … keep breathing normally. That’s about the instruction for the “Forced Vital Capacity test”, which is a standard measure of your FVC just repeated over the life course. (Image: The healing of Tobit 1630, follower of Caravaggio and The finding of Sebastian 1649, Georges de la Tour, Gemäldegalerie Berlin)

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Illness duration

The focus in medical analyses is primarily put on the diagnosis of illness. This is the best strategy, if the onset of an illness has a precise beginning and ending. In all processes, where either the beginning and/or the ending is less well-defined as precise point in time, the progression, as phase in or phase out of illness, is also of substantive interest. A duration analysis can inform about the potential presence of a co-morbidity in case, for example, an infection continues beyond the normally expected duration.
Financial pressures in the medical systems makes it necessary to release patients in a timely fashion. Therefore, has become more important to monitor patients even after release from hospital. Digital devices can support such a monitoring.
The study by Josi Levi and co-authors (2026) shows that smartphones or just the monitoring of the number of steps of patient offers a rather reliable indicator on the health status towards the end. The information that a patient has recovered to the normal level of activities as before the onset of the illness works quite well as indicator of recovery. A more precise measure of the duration of an illness is important for patients, care persons, the health system overall. The duration is one of the cost-intensive factors of any illness and it is surprising how little we know about the issue of time and duration in many health processes.

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Regulation and bureaucracy

Economists will celebrate 55 years of the theory of regulation pioneered by George Stigler, which was published in 1971 in 2026. The basic question asked at the time and today is: why do we have regulation? The pubic choice and political economy answer of Stigler (1971) and many scholars after him, is that the industry of a specific sector will acquire the regulation or the public interest in this regulation and, subsequently, the industry will design and operate it to its benefits. At least, this is in a nutshell my summary of the literature inspired by Sam Peltzman (2021, p.20). If we add to this the perspectives of theories of bureaucracy (Sharma, 2020), we become skeptic of an efficient implementation of regulations by governments or governmental agencies.
In the field of pharmaceutical applications, it is the “European Diabetes Forum” which calls for a regulation on reliable “glucose monitoring devices” with industry and user backing. Of course, this asks for bureaucratic control of the regulation, imports and markets of such devices later on. The one (regulation) is rarely coming without the other (bureaucracy). It is about time to acknowledge this for societies as a whole as well.

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Climate, time and space

For statistical analyses is good practice to not only study averages, but whole distributions over time and space. Climate change is an obvious candidate to apply such a methodology. The analysis of US data on temperature changes across quantiles of the distribution in 48 regions over 70 years finds distinct patterns of temperature changes. The authors María Dolores Gadea Rivas and Jesús Gonzalo published their findings in PLOS Climate, which showed different patterns of climate warming. Taking into account that it is not only average temperatures that may shift, but only the lower winter temperatures or the warmer summer peaks, they find overall 84% of the regions experienced a statistically significant warming effect. Whereas a higher summer peak is commonly perceived as a climate warming problem, a warmer winter usually is less associated with climate change. This leads to an overall misinterpretation or lower perception that climate warming is and has been happening over the last decades. With yellow daffodils on 2026-2-8, usually a winter day in Brussels (see image), the warm winter days are also evidence that global warming is well under way all year round and across the planet.  

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Time and power

Who commands our time? Who commands your time? Both macro- and micro-level analyses of power relationships related to time need to be investigated. Time policies are most obvious when it comes to regulations of working time, permissions of business hours or so-called bank holidays. On the micro or individual level, it is often the question of who spends more time on work, care and repair. Hourly wage rates have been claimed by economists to guide or decide societal time spent on one or the other activity. An extension of this rationale with an overriding objective of happiness might considerably change the impact of power relationships on time. Longer time perspectives on health shall also shift the view of how power impacts the time spent on various activities. Time sovereignty is a precious value in its own right.
The power play between employers and employees keeps shifting the balance, albeit the overall trend over the last 100 years has been towards a reduction of working time and increased time sovereignty of employees as a form of democratization of working life. This constitutes one form to share the benefits of productivity gains over decades as well. (Image clock on Berlin City Council building on labor day 2025).

 

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Multilateral world

In the relatively brave new world of 21st century, it is not only a question of how the super powers like the USA, China and Russia shall push their strategic goals, but also what role so-called „Middle Powers“ will play. Europe and the European Union will have to make up their minds, whether they want to belong to one or the group, individually or jointly. New as well as shifting alliances seem to be a realistic scenario. Coalitions of middle powers will be effective counterparts to the threat of domination by a single or joint brutal force of superpowers. The power of interference of middle powers in the confrontation of superpowers is considerably higher if they were to collaborate more effectively than with each of the superpowers previously in a simple 2 opponents game of chess, much more familiar to us so far. (Image: Game of chess with 4, 5 or 6 players on the same board, here adapted from chessboard for 4 players, source: greenchess.net webpage)

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Democracy in democracy

The more we are confronted with illiberal turns of democracies, the more we need to watch out for democracy washing in democracies. What do we mean by this? The NGOs like Transparency International, for example, keep records of states and their tendency to use in-transparent means or corruption to pursue their political objectives. In addition to such criteria there a number of non-negotiable items in democracy, which justify to carry rightfully the label of being a democratic state. Separation of powers, independence of the judiciary, freedom of the press figure among the best known criteria. Some states or theorists of democracy would add a federal organization to this list. The control over the military forces and the freedom to object to subscriptions is particularly relevant at times of armed conflict. Equal rights for women and men and laid convictions as well as freedom of consciousness or religious beliefs have been and still are a challenge in some countries. Each of the broader topics have to be broken down into more specific issues and indicators to measure the evolution. Advances in some areas might be confronted with regress in other areas. Each of us may have their own list of priorities what makes a democracy a democracy. On many criteria the USA has lost a leading role. The evolution of democracy in the US-American democracy has become a substantial threat to other democracies. Such analyses of comparative democracy research should guide us in the way which alliances we want to choose in the new multipolar world.

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Democracy in art

The depiction and imagery about democracy in the history of art is according to my own anecdotal evidence and visits across Europe much less frequent than depictions of royalty, mystery like religion or autocratic rulers. Therefore, visits of museums on art history, let us say prior to the impressionists, have to be approached with an obvious skepticism. The impressionist art movement rebelled against the official art academy and started their own salon and are still much acclaimed for this as well as the fight for their own vision of art. The worst authoritarian backlash came from the Nazi-terror, which annihilated large parts of democratic ideas in and about art. A second major issue is about who visits the museums in contemporary societies. Democratizing the crowd who visits art museums is a steep task. Ease of access also beyond  costs of entry, they still pose barriers of access to reach a representative sample of a population to participate in art. (Image Kunstforum new barn in construction).

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Democracy in Energy

Can there be democracy in energy? Power supply and power distribution are core topics in the theory of democracy as well. One of the foundations of democracy is the separation of power into a legislative, executive and a judicial power. A resilient democracy can assure a sufficient functioning of this fragile “balance of power”. In an energy market or a nation’s energy distribution a comparable balance of (electric or gas) power provision might be envisaged. The costs of parallel infrastructures of power distribution are high, but the resilience of overall power distribution will benefit. Also from a redundancy perspective, more than one distribution system may step in if there are failures or delivery problems with one of the distribution networks. The democracy in energy perspective goes beyond this simple analogy. Power supply as well as power distribution have been concentrated in large public or private enterprises, which might care little in terms of security or reliability of the overall system, not only during armed conflicts. Independent energy production and use, for example through wind and solar energy including batteries have pushed the feasibility of more democracy in energy to new boundaries. These technologies have enabled a new bifurcation and make room for more democracy in energy. It is a rather realistic version of a previously rather utopian vision.

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Democracy in architecture

Over centuries we have pondered how to bring more democracy into architecture. This very idea is different from designing parliaments or other democratic institutions like courts or the representation of executive power in a democracy. Bottom-up or direct participation, beyond the pseudo open participation in a competition for the chosen best design, could take the form of voting by and/or listening to the people before any realization. Rather than relying on the choice of elected representatives, we may envisage the observation of people’s choices. Such a kind of bottom-up approach has been chosen by Anna Jung and Lea Krueger who let persons chose, where they wanted to take a rest at the Kulturforum in Berlin by moving chairs to a  specific place or a nearby location. Rather than yet another grand design people could freely choose their favorite niche for 1 or 2 chairs. Sometimes just looking for shadow next to a wall or under a tree, sometimes desperate for a little green spot. Democracy in architecture can simply mean to think architecture from the people’s perspective or an observed user’s experience. Democracy in architecture could resemble a bit more the internet revolution and think in terms of user interface, UX-design. With the construction of the “Berlin Modern” well under way, such green niches shall be appreciated by many people passing by and those who would like to rest for a while.