The American political scientist Susan Stokes explores in the book The Regressors: Leaders Who Erode Their Own Democracies (Galaxia Gutenberg) the causes behind the democratic backsliding that the world is experiencing in the 21st century. She points to economic inequalities as one of the key factors and describes the process followed by leaders of different countries and ideologies to dismantle the democratic system from within. We talk about it in a conversation in Barcelona, where she has participated in a debate at the CCCB.

The latest PISA results once again place education at the center of public debate. In Catalonia, however, this time we have an even more elementary problem: we do not even know well enough where we stand. The exclusion of an excessive portion of the student body from the sample of students who took the PISA tests means that the results of Catalan boys and girls are not comparable. It is a significant technical and political fiasco. But perhaps we run the risk that the discussion about who is to blame prevents us from seeing a deeper issue. PISA is talking to us about mathematics, science, and reading comprehension. But it is also talking to us, indirectly, about democracy. The OECD points to a worrying decline in the reading ability of our children and identifies an especially revealing phenomenon: the number of young people who read quickly, superficially, and respond before having understood the text well is growing. At the same time, the use of social networks is increasing, and more than a quarter of the students state that digital devices habitually cause distractions in class.The issue, in my opinion, is not to totally demonize screens. Used well, technology can be an extraordinary learning tool. The problem is another: we are educating a generation in an ecosystem that rewards speed, constant interruption, immediate response, and emotional impact. And then we ask them to read with attention, to distinguish a fact from an opinion, to compare sources, to identify manipulation, and to listen to arguments with which they do not agree. These are not just school skills: they are democratic skills.The temporal coincidence is unsettling. While we discuss the PISA results, in Germany the far-right AfD has just obtained nearly 45% of the votes in Saxony-Anhalt. A year and a half earlier, it had already doubled its support in the federal elections and had become the second political force in the country. Germany is once again asking itself to what extent a democracy can see the values that sustain it eroded from within. It would be absurd, and too convenient, to establish a causal line between TikTok and the vote for the far right. The causes of the AfD's growth are much more complex, but we should not ignore the information ecosystem in which these concerns are transformed into political behavior. Networks do not necessarily invent unrest, but they can amplify it. They do not necessarily create polarization, but they reward content that outrages. And disinformation is especially effective when it confirms what we would already like to believe. That is why the problem of fake news is not just that we do not know how to detect a false piece of news. The most difficult problem appears when we know, or suspect, that information is false and, despite everything, we decide to share it because it reinforces our prejudices, harms the adversary, or reaffirms our identity.We are no longer just talking about digital literacy here. We are talking about democratic ethics. For many years, we have acted as if democracy were an infrastructure that, once built, functioned almost by itself: a Constitution, periodic elections, parliaments, courts, and freedom of the press. All of this is essential. But it is not enough. A democracy needs citizens willing to participate, capable of listening and deliberating, with the judgment to evaluate information and enough democratic resilience to continue respecting rules, rights, and opponents even when they are angry, afraid, or feel like they are losing. And these capabilities do not appear spontaneously when we turn eighteen. They are learned.This is where the school acquires a responsibility that goes far beyond recovering points in PISA. Obviously, we must improve mathematics, science, and reading. In fact, being able to understand a complex text is probably one of the best defenses against manipulation. But educating democratic citizens does not consist of adding an hour of "values" to the curriculum or memorizing how Parliament works. Democracy is learned by practicing it. It is learned when a student has to defend a position with arguments and listen to the opposing one. When they have to distinguish a reliable source from one that is not. When they work with other students with whom they do not share an origin, opinion, or interests. When they participate in a real decision of the school and discover that their voice has consequences. When they have to accept losing a vote. When they verify that being convinced of something does not equate to being right.Perhaps, then, after PISA we should formulate a slightly different question. Not just how many points we want to recover in reading or mathematics, but what kind of citizen we want to emerge from our schools. Someone capable of reading a long text. Of listening to an opinion they detest. Of distinguishing a scientific argument from a slogan. Of not sharing a lie even if it favors their own. Of participating without wanting to exclude. And of defending democratic rules even when the result is not what they would want. If the school does not help to form this citizen, the problem we have is quite a bit more serious than performing poorly in PISA. We need above all to teach how to live democratically in a world that will continue to be digital.

As it could not be otherwise, the illiberal wave sweeping the world has set its sights on the right to vote. Voting with freedom of conscience is surely the most relevant civic act, the most transcendent right that a citizen can exercise. Ballot boxes identify democracies, even though authoritarian regimes falsify them to disguise themselves as democracies: Putin's Russia, for example. But the vote, and specifically the manipulation of the vote for one's own electoral benefit, is the dark object of desire for authoritarian politicians and rulers. They usually accuse others of engaging in it, because when they are in power they indulge in it gluttonously.The temptation to tamper with votes is sharpening. In Argentina, Milei has promoted an electoral reform that, if it goes ahead, will completely redesign the rules of the democratic game from top to bottom. Among other things, the chainsaw man proposes that electoral campaigns not be paid for by the state, but rather sponsored by individuals and companies, and he also wants to eliminate presidential debates and even the mandatory primaries within parties.Trump has turned manipulations regarding the vote into a raison d'être for his policies, starting with the fact of having instigated the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, as a supposed rebellion against no less supposed fraudulent elections (which he had lost and Biden had won). Trump has likewise fueled the suspicion of fraud regarding the midterm elections in the month of November (and he will intensify it as they approach, because he fears losing them), and a few days ago, at a convention in Dallas, in the middle of an erratic and decadent speech, he wanted to cast a lure: five thousand dollars for every adult American citizen in the event that the Republicans win the elections. A promise like this is indecent, illegal, and obviously unachievable, but the shot has already been fired: it is about putting a price on the vote and treating it as just another commodity.In the Spanish state, the Supreme Court has just provisionally halted the so-called “law of grandchildren” to prevent the voting rights of the descendants of Spanish citizens who had to go into exile during the Franco dictatorship. This is equivalent to taking the right to vote away from more than four hundred thousand Spanish citizens, with the argument –wielded by the high court without any attempt to hide it– that their participation in the elections could “alter the result desired by the Spaniards” in the polls. The “desired result,” in case anyone has lost track, is for the sum of PP and Vox to win the elections. Since we mention it, Santiago Abascal's party has proposed more than once (and broad sectors of the PP view it favorably) to modify the electoral law so that “minorities” cannot run in elections as they have done until now, nor “impose their will” in Congress or the Senate. This, in case anyone has lost track as well, is aimed at the left-wing parties, and also at the Basque and Catalan nationalist parties.

Democracy is in decline globally and especially in the United States, where Donald Trump's return to the White House has caused an "unprecedented" democratic backsliding. This is indicated by the report from the Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA), which confirms a global deterioration of democracy, with special emphasis on the North American country, where various indicators, such as freedom of the press or judicial independence, have sunk to their lowest levels in 50 years.

Today's political game expresses, feeds, and is fed by the growing perception that we live in a society where the gain of some is seen as the definitive loss of others. And all of this feeds anger as the dominant political emotion. This is not a new debate. In the early eighties, in the midst of stagflation, Lester Thurow already spoke of the "zero-sum society" to describe a stagnant economy where every decision meant choosing who won and who lost. Back then, everything became more difficult, as no one accepted being the loser. Post-war democracy had functioned precisely because growth allowed for compromises in which everyone ended up winning, even if they did not win the same thing or at the same time. Here, at home, we experienced this at the end of the Franco regime and at the beginning of democracy. Now, a few decades later, the issue returns with old and new coordinates. We are once again in a clear stagnation of expectations, but now social networks are added to the mix, turning tension into a business and amplifying emotions in the face of any stumble.

“Liberty and democracy are incompatible”. It was Peter Thiel, the superhero of Pay Pal and Palantir Technologies, who thus gave meaning to the offensive against democracy that has been circulating in the United States for some time and that Donald Trump is putting into practice with systematic abuse of power, permanently disregarding the legislative and judicial branches. The ball has been inflating. The ideologues of the government, with Vice President J.D. Vance in the front line, have joined in. And the anti-democratic flood has continued to prosper, in the USA, but also in Europe.

We have become accustomed to confusing pessimism with lucidity. When was the last time a public debate left you wanting to do something, and not simply resigned? This question defines a paradox of our time: we have never had so much information, so many experts, and so much analytical capacity, and yet the feeling that the big problems are beyond our control has never been so widespread.Every day, public debate follows a known ritual. War, polarization, housing crisis, climate change, immigration, aging, artificial intelligence. Then come the analysts and commentators, who with solid arguments explain to us why institutions are weak, why politics is blocked, and why challenges are becoming increasingly difficult. Necessary analyses, but which leave an implicit conclusion: there is very little room to change things.Perhaps this is the great blind spot of our public debate. We have confused intelligence with the ability to diagnose problems. We give prestige to those who detect risks first and who construct the most convincing narrative about decline; on the other hand, we dedicate much less energy to exploring solutions, to comparing experiences that have worked, or to imagining institutions capable of responding to new challenges.It is as if we admire the doctor who brilliantly describes an illness more than the one who dedicates the same talent to finding a treatment for it. Diagnosis is essential, but it is not the end goal of medicine. Nor should it be the end goal of public debate. Democracy needs criticism, but above all civic imagination: the collective ability to imagine possible futures and mobilize wills to make them a reality. When this imagination weakens, we stop asking ourselves "what can we do?" and limit ourselves to asking "what will happen to us?" The first question creates citizens; the second creates spectators.History often reminds us that the future does not obey predictions. In the mid-1980s, almost no one foresaw the fall of the Berlin Wall; the European order seemed immutable. But millions of citizens demonstrated that what seemed unimaginable was only so until someone started to make it possible.

Democracy comes from demos (people) and kratia (power, authority). Aristocracy comes from aristos (the best): the power of the best. But by becoming hereditary power, the best ceased to be so. The best thing is to combine democracy with meritocracy, a government of the people in which positions are held by those who have the most merit, those who deserve it.

It is a common place to affirm that politics consists in choosing the least bad of two deficient alternatives and that democracy serves to oust those who do not do well. In the Declaration of Independence of the United States, in 1776, Thomas Jefferson wrote that “all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. Citizens have the right to be free and to try to be happy.In Spain, for years we have found ourselves mired in a confrontation that has turned politics into a war of communication where anything goes to harm the opponent, who has already become an enemy. We have moved away from the principles proclaimed by Jefferson and practiced by Adams, and we have built a political environment based on what is negative and bad rather than on what is good and positive, and on the fact that telling lies is "legitimate" if it is effective. "That's politics," they say. It is not.It doesn't matter if a person hasn't broken the law or abused their power if I can accuse them of doing so, with false reasons or half-truths. Once the accusation has begun, social networks will do the rest and, from anonymity, will convince many that what is not true is true. The problem is that the enemy of truth is not lies, but half-truths, which, by containing part of the truthfulness, make it difficult to discern the degree of falsehood.

Questioning electoral results is a strategy employed by the global far-right, which Vox has now imported to Spain, but that does not make it any less dangerous. Not long ago, Donald Trump still had not accepted his 2020 electoral defeat to Joe Biden, even though there is no evidence to suggest he won those elections. Now, Santiago Abascal, and to a lesser extent also the PP with Isabel Díaz Ayuso, are stirring up the specter of electoral fraud and accusing Pedro Sánchez of preparing a fix for the upcoming general elections.

I don't like the prospective electoral results suggested by opinion polls. More specifically, I dislike all results: not just those awarded to far-right parties. I mean that from a sovereignist point of view, which is mine, I believe they are not the results that would best suit the country. Neither the results of those who will supposedly be prime ministers again, nor those of whom strong rises are predicted, nor those who hold on, nor those of whom strong declines are foreseen.

Philosopher, essayist and columnist, she teaches philosophy at Sapienza Università di Roma. Donatella Di Cesare (Rome, 1956) has been fighting against the extreme right for years in all areas, including the media and the streets. She is not afraid, even though she had to have police escort due to threats received from fascist and neo-Nazi groups. Among other works, she has published Heidegger y los judíos (2017), Tortura (2018), Terrorismo. Una guerra civil global (2017), Marranos (2019) and Sobre la vocación política de la filosofía (2020), translated into Spanish by Gedisa. In Catalan, she has just published Tecnofeixisme. La suspensió tàcita de la política (Arcàdia). With translation by Coral Romà, the book reflects on how totalitarian forms of government are being imposed worldwide and how the power of the people is being reduced.

The company Nvidia (of chips) is worth on the stock market more than a hundred times the annual budget of the Generalitat and is approaching Germany's annual GDP. Meta (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp) has a value similar to Spain's GDP. Nvidia's annual profits are almost double Croatia's budget. The leap in scale is formidable. Just a comparison from yesterday: in the meeting between the Government and the education unions, the salary improvement offer was 355 euros per teacher over four years.

In a country that is both Catholic and priest-eater like ours, the relationship between religion and politics has historically been sinuous and critical. Polarization became very extreme during the Civil War, the echo of which continues to resonate. Vox-PP remind us of it every day. At the same time, there are surprising phenomena: we have, for example, a socialist president, Salvador Illa, who does not hide his Christian humanism in the midst of a society that is going in another direction, increasingly secularized and orphaned of meaning. And at the same time, we have an independentist far-right that banally warns about the dangers facing Christian civilization, whose values it does not practice.

Donald Trump is a millionaire, a real estate magnate, has direct interests in technology companies and... is Donald Trump. The President of the United States embodies in himself all the characteristics of the "enemy" that this weekend has been pointed out by the left gathered in Barcelona, with Pedro Sánchez as host, who has established himself as the reference of the international progressive movement. "When we socialists govern, states do not bow to elites, we put them in their place," he exclaimed to close the weekend summits before the 6,500 people who filled pavilion 8 of Fira de Barcelona. The commitment of the Spanish leader, but also of the heads of state and government who have met, is to "resist" the push of the far-right, but also to "build" together a new multilateral world. "We will twist the arm of those who believe themselves untouchable. Of the millionaires who exploit people and play with greed; of the speculators who play with people's savings and homes, and of the technologists who line their pockets at the expense of the health of democracies and the mental health of our youth," Sánchez ratified, intoning from the stage the "No to war" that the entire auditorium followed.

Are we becoming more servile to power every day? The signs point to yes. Apathy is gaining ground, especially among the youngest. We are witnessing atrocious massacres like the one in Gaza, wars of caprice like the one in Iran, imperialist aggressions like Russia's against Ukraine. The government of the world's leading power, the United States, is in the hands of delirious madmen. Yet we protest less than twenty years ago. And much less than fifty years ago.

Pedro Sánchez has inaugurated with Lula da Silva, president of Brazil, the weekend with which the Spanish government seeks to establish Barcelona as one of the reference cities against trumpism. The two leaders met this morning at the Palau de Pedralbes, where they held a meeting, and thus inaugurate two days in which up to three summits of international progressivism coincide in the Catalan capital, with the Spanish president acting as host.

“There are days that are born without knowing they can end up being remembered. Apparently ordinary days, caught between routine and uncertainty, that unfold with the same cadence as always: a kiss before leaving home, a shared concern, a promise cast into the future before going to sleep. And yet, some of these days hide a disturbing question: will this be one of those days that history will point to?”

The invisible hand, according to Adam Smith: “Each person uses their capital to satisfy their immediate needs, but an invisible hand leads them to promote an objective that is not in their intentions, promoting efficient markets in a complex aggregate that no one can fully understand [...]”. The supremacy of the market. Hayek described this invisible hand as an imperceptible and unfathomable, but solid and determining, pattern. Market dynamics make it possible for people to act on their own, in ignorance of the whole, without anyone having to tell them what to do.Conventional capitalism, until the 21st century, was sustained by a reciprocal relationship between business and society, between economy and democracy. When in 1965 General Motors had a value of approximately 25,000 million dollars (about 225,000 million dollars today), it employed 735,000 workers; today, Alphabet (Google's parent company) has a value of approximately 2 trillion dollars and about 190,000 workers, and Meta (Facebook's parent company), more than 1 trillion dollars in valuation and 79,000 employees. Reciprocity has been lost, even more so due to the capacity companies have to condition demand: they do not need the market, they create it. The alignment between business, economic, political, and social interests has weakened. Some maintain, with good reason, that past reciprocities were at the origin of the amicable relationship between market and democracy. They needed each other. That balance has been lost. The market dominates democracy. Hence the growing relevance of stark economic profit. The right does not hide its interests at all...

The Sophists have a bad reputation. Those itinerant teachers were skeptics and relativists, they charged for their lessons and sought to persuade, through one argument or the other, instead of seeking absolute truth, in which they did not believe. Plato and Aristotle despised them.