Aporien der Macht. Wer hat in der Demokratie das Sagen, der Bürger oder das politische System?
Aporias of power. Who is in charge in a democracy, the citizen or the political system?

Summary/Abstract: The essay is based on the observation that in the self-description of modern democracies two ma- jor narratives irreconcilably collide: on the one hand, the naive narrative of popular sovereignty, according to which free and equal citizens elect their representatives, who then make collective decisions in their interests; on the other hand, the elitist-analytical narrative of the self-referentiality of the political system, in which party officials fight for power and only use the interests of the citizens as toys. The result of the study is a theory of the emergence of power in modern democratic societies based on the dialectic of two types of power (positional and official power). It wants to prove that the paradox of the two narratives is constitutively located within a democracy, i.e. it may not be resolved on one side or the other if one does not want to distort reality.

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