The protests against Stuttgart 21 or against the Castor transports, including the newly constructed "angry citizen," are results of a development in which formal processes of political decision-making, i.e., government, are increasingly supplemented or even replaced by semi-official or informal mechanisms of governance. The formal characteristics of democratic regimes are being softened, and legitimacy is sought in processes of efficient governance rather than in the rational formation of wills. Issues of inclusion and exclusion are increasingly decided by the power of influential interest groups.
For unions and other democratic civil society actors, these changes pose a significant challenge. They are discussed in this book by representatives from academia, trade unions, and NGOs. The book aims to raise awareness of these issues and to place the new forms of informal governance at the center of a social politics of democracy.
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