Global sham democracy: How representative democracy concentrates power, disempowers the people and destroys itself

By: Mikulaschek, Dominik

Global Sham Democracy is a systems-based analysis of modern political order-and a direct challenge to one of the most common assumptions of our time: that representative democracy automatically equals popular sovereignty. The book asks a precise, verifiable question: do today's democratic procedures actually enable the people to rule, or do they primarily symbolize that rule while real decision-making power is structurally concentrated elsewhere? Dominik Mikulaschek approaches democracy neither as a moral ideal nor as a political camp, but as a functional concept: a technical method for organizing collective decision-making under the condition of popular sovereignty. To examine this scientifically, the book separates normative expectations ("what democracy should be") from functional reality ("how decision-making systems operate and what outcomes their architecture produces"). Democracy is treated as a measurable system-evaluated through criteria such as decision-making authority, feedback loops, reversibility, transparency, accountability, and error-correction capacity. From this benchmark, the book develops its central thesis: representation is not simply a democratic tool-it is a systemic rupture. Representative systems transfer power upward through institutional filters that tend to disconnect citizens' will from the actual exercise of authority. This disconnection is not framed as the moral failure of politicians or voters, but as a rational consequence of system design. If feedback is interrupted, public trust erodes; if correction mechanisms are weak, frustration grows; and if legitimacy becomes symbolic, radicalization becomes structurally likely. Step by step, the book traces how power concentrates through party structures, how political dependence forms through economic influence, and how legitimacy is maintained through media narratives and narrative management. It explains why "the common good" often fails to emerge-not because citizens lack virtue, b

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 3384835085
• ISBN13: 9783384835086
• Release Date: February 2026
• Publisher: Tredition Gmbh
• Length: 64 Pages
• Weight: 0.99 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 8.5" x 11.0"