New Democracies and Old Societies in Europe

Ten years after the break down of the Berlin Wall, the withering away of real existing socialism but also of the welfare state, Europe is preparing for its re-unification. Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic have already entered the NATO, nine more countries from the former Soviet Block and the Mediterranean are preparing themselves to enter the European Union. After hundreds of years of war the era of peace and welfare which seemed to be so near has vanished in new wars and atrocities. Fundamentalisms and globalisation question democracy as such. Nowadays the new term is good governance. The nation-state is stronger than imagined, and seems even to become the only refuge against global shareholder capitalism. Will the old civil societies be able to develop new forms of democracy in the heritage of our past?