You got to love public radio. Granted, any institution that has a guaranteed income from the tax/licence payer and is therefore effectively insulated from their customers demands is slightly suspicious, but nonetheless, the continued existence of programs that provide an hour-long space for political debate without any commercials (and next to nil music in between) is reason to rejoice. This week, the good folks over at Bavarian Broadcasting’s (radio is mostly federal in Germany) Political Dossier invited me for a friendly chat with a representative of “Mehr Demokratie“, an NGO campaigning for institutional reform in general and a (much more) extensive use of referenda in particular. The subject of our little conversation was the apparent contradiction between allegedly widespread political disaffection and a “new lust for politics” in Germany. I do not really believe in the latter, but the former was the subject of my PhD thesis, so I had a lot of fun for a whole hour. If you just can’t get enough of my lovely voice, you can listen to the show’s podcast (in German).
