2020

Rautiainen, Matti; Raiker, Andrea

As discussed in the introduction, democracy is not only complex and complicated; over time its conception and practices change according to the state of individuals, their relationships with varying communities and the environments in which they live. Its simplest form occurred in its emergence in ancient Greek city-states, such as Athens. Nowadays, with country populations being many millions, their representatives in parliaments and governments are substantially influenced by pluralism, meaning varying interpretations of ‘democracy’ and pluralism, meaning domination of democracy by international and global neoliberal business and commercial groups. These two forms of pluralism, together with direct (individually focused) elitism and the impact of technology on truth, imply that learning what ‘democracy’ is through a simple, straightforward definition is impossible. Orwell’s post-war deliberation is still valid. Also, as highlighted in the Italian chapter, to think nationally on how to develop citizens on their understanding and practice of thinking and acting democratically is not enough. Comprehension of globalisation, stimulated in Europe through immigration, racism and terrorism, means that there needs to be elements in the teaching and learning of democratic citizenship that go beyond national parameters because democracy has values that are appreciated world-wide, even if national governing ideologies restrain their practice; it is in fact a reality people build, or wish to build, together based on democratic values such as equality, justice and freedom. This necessitates citizens to acquire intercultural dialogue, as argued by Claudia Lenz.