Samenvatting

The displacement of political decision making from the classic bodies of representative democracy to non democratically legitimised arenas is a major threat to contemporary representative democracy. In this essay, three displacements are discussed: from parliamentary to deliberative processes, from political to professional decision making, and from national to international arenas. Several of the safeguards that have been developed in parliamentary democracy over the past centuries, such as representation, transparency, majority voting, and public accountability, are missing or are underdeveloped in these new arenas. The essay explores how these safeguards could be introduced into these new arenas and concludes that the displacement of politics should be attended by a dissemination of democracy.