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I'm afraid I'm one of those speakers

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you hope you're not going to meet at TED.

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First, I don't have a mobile,

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so I'm on the safe side.

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Secondly, a political theorist

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who's going to talk about the crisis of democracy

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is probably not the most exciting topic you can think about.

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And plus, I'm not going to give you any answers.

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I'm much more trying to add to some of the questions we're talking about.

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And one of the things that I want to question

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is this very popular hope these days

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that transparency and openness

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can restore the trust in democratic institutions.

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There is one more reason for you to be suspicious about me.

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You people, the Church of TED, are a very optimistic community.

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(Laughter)

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Basically you believe in complexity, but not in ambiguity.

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As you have been told, I'm Bulgarian.

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And according to the surveys,

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we are marked the most pessimistic people in the world.

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(Laughter)

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The Economist magazine recently wrote an article

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covering one of the recent studies on happiness,

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and the title was "The Happy, the Unhappy and the Bulgarians."

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(Laughter)

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So now when you know what to expect,

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let's give you the story.

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And this is a rainy election day in a small country --

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that can be my country, but could be also your country.

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And because of the rain until four o'clock in the afternoon,

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nobody went to the polling stations.

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But then the rain stopped,

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people went to vote.

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And when the votes had been counted,

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three-fourths of the people have voted with a blank ballot.

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The government and the opposition,

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they have been simply paralyzed.

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Because you know what to do about the protests.

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You know who to arrest, who to negotiate with.

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But what to do about people who are voting with a blank ballot?

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So the government decided to have the elections once again.

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And this time even a greater number,

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83 percent of the people, voted with blank ballots.

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Basically they went to the ballot boxes

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to tell that they have nobody to vote for.

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This is the opening of a beautiful novel by Jose Saramago

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called "Seeing."

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But in my view it very well captures

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part of the problem that we have with democracy in Europe these days.

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On one level nobody's questioning

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that democracy is the best form of government.

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Democracy is the only game in town.

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The problem is that many people start to believe

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that it is not a game worth playing.

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For the last 30 years, political scientists have observed

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that there is a constant decline in electoral turnout,

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and the people who are least interested to vote

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are the people whom you expect are going to gain most out of voting.

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I mean the unemployed, the under-privileged.

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And this is a major issue.

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Because especially now with the economic crisis,

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you can see that the trust in politics,

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that the trust in democratic institutions,

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was really destroyed.

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According to the latest survey being done by the European Commission,

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89 percent of the citizens of Europe believe that there is a growing gap

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between the opinion of the policy-makers and the opinion of the public.

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Only 18 percent of Italians and 15 percent of Greeks

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believe that their vote matters.

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Basically people start to understand that they can change governments,

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but they cannot change policies.

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And the question which I want to ask is the following:

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How did it happen that we are living in societies

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which are much freer than ever before --

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we have more rights, we can travel easier,

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we have access to more information --

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at the same time that trust in our democratic institutions

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basically has collapsed?

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So basically I want to ask:

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What went right and what went wrong in these 50 years

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when we talk about democracy?

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And I'll start with what went right.

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And the first thing that went right was, of course,

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these five revolutions which, in my view,

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very much changed the way we're living and deepened our democratic experience.

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And the first was the cultural and social revolution of 1968 and 1970s,

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which put the individual at the center of politics.

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It was the human rights moment.

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Basically this was also a major outbreak, a culture of dissent,

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a culture of basically non-conformism,

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which was not known before.

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So I do believe that even things like that

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are very much the children of '68 --

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nevertheless that most of us had been even not born then.

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But after that you have the market revolution of the 1980s.

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And nevertheless that many people on the left try to hate it,

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the truth is that it was very much the market revolution that sent the message:

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"The government does not know better."

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And you have more choice-driven societies.

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And of course, you have 1989 -- the end of Communism, the end of the Cold War.

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And it was the birth of the global world.

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And you have the Internet.

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And this is not the audience to which I'm going to preach

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to what extent the Internet empowered people.

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It has changed the way we are communicating

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and basically we are viewing politics.

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The very idea of political community totally has changed.

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And I'm going to name one more revolution,

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and this is the revolution in brain sciences,

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which totally changed the way

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we understand how people are making decisions.

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So this is what went right.

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But if we're going to see what went wrong,

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we're going to end up with the same five revolutions.

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Because first you have the 1960s and 1970s,

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cultural and social revolution,

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which in a certain way destroyed the idea of a collective purpose.

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The very idea, all these collective nouns that we have been taught about --

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nation, class, family.

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We start to like divorcing, if we're married at all.

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All this was very much under attack.

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And it is so difficult to engage people in politics

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when they believe that what really matters

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is where they personally stand.

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And you have the market revolution of the 1980s

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and the huge increase of inequality in societies.

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Remember, until the 1970s,

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the spread of democracy has always been accompanied

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by the decline of inequality.

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The more democratic our societies have been,

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the more equal they have been becoming.

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Now we have the reverse tendency.

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The spread of democracy now is very much accompanied

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by the increase in inequality.

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And I find this very much disturbing

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when we're talking about what's going on right and wrong

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with democracy these days.

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And if you go to 1989 --

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something that basically you don't expect that anybody's going to criticize --

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but many are going to tell you, "Listen, it was the end of the Cold War

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that tore the social contract between the elites and the people in Western Europe."

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When the Soviet Union was still there,

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the rich and the powerful, they needed the people,

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because they feared them.

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Now the elites basically have been liberated.

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They're very mobile. You cannot tax them.

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And basically they don't fear the people.

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So as a result of it, you have this very strange situation

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in which the elites basically got out of the control of the voters.

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So this is not by accident

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that the voters are not interested to vote anymore.

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And when we talk about the Internet,

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yes, it's true, the Internet connected all of us,

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but we also know that the Internet created these echo chambers and political ghettos

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in which for all your life you can stay with the political community you belong to.

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And it's becoming more and more difficult

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to understand the people who are not like you.

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I know that many people here

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have been splendidly speaking about the digital world and the possibility for cooperation,

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but [have you] seen what the digital world has done to American politics these days?

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This is also partly a result of the Internet revolution.

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This is the other side of the things that we like.

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And when you go to the brain sciences,

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what political consultants learned from the brain scientists

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is don't talk to me about ideas anymore,

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don't talk to me about policy programs.

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What really matters is basically to manipulate the emotions of the people.

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And you have this very strongly

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to the extent that, even if you see when we talk about revolutions these days,

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these revolutions are not named anymore around ideologies or ideas.

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Before, revolutions used to have ideological names.

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They could be communist, they could be liberal,

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they could be fascist or Islamic.

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Now the revolutions are called under the medium which is most used.

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You have Facebook revolutions, Twitter revolutions.

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The content doesn't matter anymore, the problem is the media.

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I'm saying this because one of my major points

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is what went right is also what went wrong.

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And when we're now trying to see how we can change the situation,

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when basically we're trying to see what can be done about democracy,

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we should keep this ambiguity in mind.

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Because probably some of the things that we love most

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are going to be also the things that can hurt us most.

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These days it's very popular to believe

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that this push for transparency,

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this kind of a combination between active citizens, new technologies

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and much more transparency-friendly legislation

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can restore trust in politics.

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You believe that when you have these new technologies and people who are ready to use this,

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it can make it much more difficult for the governments to lie,

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it's going to be more difficult for them to steal

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and probably even going to be more difficult for them to kill.

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This is probably true.

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But I do believe that we should be also very clear

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that now when we put the transparency at the center of politics

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where the message is, "It's transparency, stupid."

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Transparency is not about restoring trust in institutions.

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Transparency is politics' management of mistrust.

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We are assuming that our societies are going to be based on mistrust.

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And by the way, mistrust was always very important for democracy.

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This is why you have checks and balances.

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This is why basically you have all this creative mistrust

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between the representatives and those whom they represent.

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But when politics is only management of mistrust,

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then -- I'm very glad that "1984" has been mentioned --

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now we're going to have "1984" in reverse.

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It's not going to be the Big Brother watching you,

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it's going to be we being the Big Brother

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watching the political class.

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But is this the idea of a free society?

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For example, can you imagine

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that decent, civic, talented people are going to run for office

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if they really do believe

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that politics is also about managing mistrust?

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Are you not afraid with all these technologies

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that are going to track down

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any statement the politicians are going to make on certain issues,

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are you not afraid that this is going to be a very strong signal to politicians

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to repeat their positions, even the very wrong positions,

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because consistency is going to be more important than common sense?

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And the Americans who are in the room,

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are you not afraid that your presidents are going to govern

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on the basis of what they said in the primary elections?

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I find this extremely important,

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because democracy is about people changing their views

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based on rational arguments and discussions.

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And we can lose this with the very noble idea

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to keep people accountable

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for showing the people that we're not going to tolerate

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politicians the opportunism in politics.

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So for me this is extremely important.

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And I do believe that when we're discussing politics these days,

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probably it makes sense

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to look also at this type of a story.

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But also don't forget, any unveiling is also veiling.

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[Regardless of] how transparent our governments want to be,

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they're going to be selectively transparent.

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In a small country that could be my country,

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but could be also your country,

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they took a decision -- it is a real case story --

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that all of the governmental decisions,

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discussions of the council of ministers,

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were going to be published on the Internet

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24 hours after the council discussions took place.

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And the public was extremely all for it.

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So I had the opportunity to talk to the prime minister,

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why he made this decision.

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He said, "Listen, this is the best way

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to keep the mouths of my ministers closed.

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Because it's going to be very difficult for them to dissent

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knowing that 24 hours after

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this is going to be on the public space,

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and this is in a certain way going to be a political crisis."

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So when we talk about transparency,

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when we talk about openness,

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I really do believe that what we should keep in mind

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is that what went right is what went wrong.

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And this is Goethe, who is neither Bulgarian nor a political scientist,

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some centuries ago he said,

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"There is a big shadow where there is much light."

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Thank you very much.

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(Applause)