The project asks why many observers feel that democratic institutions are overburdened by the regulatory challenges of the present. It focuses on two possible causes: Democratic decision-making is, firstly, impaired by crisis reaction mechanisms that are intended to work as emergency measures yet increasingly are regarded as "normal cases". Secondly, it is problematic that democratic conflicts are not understood to be productive and functionally necessary. Rather, the aim is "correct" solutions, an idealised unity and a material concept of the common good. Against this background I will examine how expectations of normality, but also natural law rudiments and belief in (natural) science influence democratic decision-making. These findings will then be measured against democratic theory and the normatively only roughly pre-structured understanding of democracy in the Basic Law. In particular, the classical linear concept of legitimation is to be confronted with more difference-oriented, "post-identitarian" alternatives.

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