Boiling Point: an important conversation. All rights reserved.openDemocracy is a media partner of the World Forum for Democracy 2017: the subject this year is 'populism'. In the run-up to that event in early November, we asked what kind of media and politics we need "to re-connect to citizens, make informed choices and function optimally in 21st century democracy." Rosemary Bechler, one of three rapporteurs summing up the debate in the event's closing session, focused on citizen involvement and participatory democracy.
Listening to Richard Wike’s illuminating contribution to the Forum’s first session – ‘Time for Facts’ – talking about the deep frustration of increasing numbers of people in a pessimistic Europe and US with representative democracy, at one point he said: “They feel like the well-connected and wealthy have benefited, and they have been left out.” Of course the Pew Research Centre researches how people view democracy and this is a research fact. It is not the researcher’s job to comment on this. But I wanted to shout out, “Yes, they do feel like this, and the already wealthy have benefited, and they have been left out!” They are quite right.
