Political Participation and Institutional Reforms

Grigory Yavlinsky’s report at the conference «The Uses of Power: Legitimacy, Democracy, and the Rewriting of the International Order,» held April 14–16, 2026, at the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences in the Vatican.

The end of an era

The global order created after the end of World War II has gone.

The bloody confrontation between Russia and Ukraine, the critical escalation of the situation in the Middle East, the mounting wide-ranging political crisis in Europe and the politics of the US President Donald Trump — all these factors draw a line on the world order that had existed for almost eight decades.

Globalism is ending together with its inherent institutions, structures and models of political behaviour.

It would be a dangerous mistake to treat all these events as a natural development following on from the logical departure of an old system that had served its time. The current state of European politics, the growth of nationalism and populism, centrifugal trends in the European Union, the likelihood of the break-up of Europe into East and West — these are all the consequences of the end of the era, and if all these trends continue, new tragedies are inevitable. We are witnessing the destruction of the system of nuclear arms control treaties created in the second half of the last century and subsequent risks to the survival of the non-proliferation regime.

Fundamental principles are disintegrating: the life of the individual is no longer a universal value. Unfortunately, in the 80 years since the end of World War II mankind has managed to complete the full cycle — from consciousness of the catastrophe that claimed tens of millions of lives through the construction of systems of inter-state and intra-state relations, where human life was an incontrovertible value, until the virtually comprehensive devaluation and erosion of human values from international politics. The dehumanisation of “foreigners”, others “who are not like us”, is becoming a key trend in a world that is fracturing and fragmenting more and more. This concerns not only people of a different race, nation or religion, and not only minorities, but also in principle any social groups segregated according to the most diverse criteria.

It would appear that a time of troubles is upon us …

Today our time on this earth is underpinned by uncertainty, unpredictability and the elimination of any possible future even in the medium or short term.

In such an environment, political actions are driven not by a vision of the future, but instead by the inertia of the past and adherence to certain models that political leaders declare to be true. At the same time, the most important decisions are adopted without any substantive discussion and approval with the international community or a significant part thereof.

As the world plunges more and more into chaos, existing political elites are trying to adapt in some way or other. The majority of them have identified what they consider to be the simplest solution: to build up military forces. This is viewed as a guarantee of security not only by the leaders waging wars today, but also by almost every single participant in the political process.

The use of force has begun to be perceived as virtually the key factor of current international relations. Moreover, a strong-arm approach is frequently deemed the preferable and possibly only way to resolve the problems facing a country today. The danger of a world war, all the more so a nuclear one, is dismissed via inane banter and obfuscation irresponsibly, supplanted in the process by the demands of transitory political interests that pale incomparably in significance.

New risks will appear and spread rapidly. We are witnessing right now the rapid development and large-scale use of new military technologies, in particular, drones.

In actual fact, in the current reality any attempts to secure the best position, acquire an advantage leveraged by force in today’s global disorder, imply here the search for the best cabin on the Titanic as it is about to hit the iceberg. Inside the ship such actions might well have appeared rational, but what was the outcome?

Democracy and technologies

The crisis facing mankind today is intensifying and is underlined by the explosive development of artificial intelligence. The moment in time when technologies transgress the lines and oppose human reason is not far off. And we need to be ready.

Could it really be the case that the right response is to agree that democracy is limiting our freedoms and is holding back progress, and on this basis accept that our prospects and the prototype of the future of mankind have already been described and formed by the technological futurist pictures of artificial intelligence, new technologies and Big Data and the entrepreneurs behind them who are seeking to become influential politicians very soon?

A stringent condition has been set — in the new reality only the community (society, country, state) — which gains the upper hand and is highly likely to secure a monopoly in advance technologies — will survive and prosper.

The US artificial intelligence action plan, which was published in July 2025 (Winning the Race)¹, is a practical step in the path to merging the views of the technocrats with the political administration and forming a technological oligarchy. Allies, including European countries, are assigned in this plan the role of users of American technologies. China represents the other extreme with its state capitalist model where the leaders in new technologies are completely subordinate to the country’s ruling Communist Party.

De facto we are witnessing a new arms race: high technology is being considered first and foremost not as a way to improve people’s lives, but instead as a battlefield for survival with an irreconcilable competitor.

Traditional political competitive models, which were based on an open agenda and presupposed the responsibility of politicians to citizens and elites, no longer work.

Democracy is being transformed into oligarchic populism, combining a focus on the moods of the moment in social networks and the desires of online users with satisfaction of the interests of small elite groups.

Consequently, democratic procedures are being used to form regimes which rely to a significant extent on the straightforward manipulation of the public at large through digital technologies and social networks.

The gulf between the legality of the regime (the lawful form of its establishment) and its legitimacy (the voluntary consent of the country’s citizens to be subjected to its rule) will increase more and more and become a serious problem going forward.

New online digital technologies are concealing social and psychological tyranny, legitimising it intrinsically, and are implementing in practice under the covert political monopolisation of autocratic state structures virulent populism where the “will of the people” becomes a victim of online disinformation.

In these circumstances, as we can already see, the practical use of political authority diverges significantly from the principles of reason and the ability to see and understand actual prospects. There is no place in the new agenda for a rational conceptualisation of the desired social structure. Everything is focused on emotions, on inciting resentment and on restoring some former “golden age”. This is one of the characteristics of political entropy, a new systemic phenomenon of modern civilisation: adapting politics to the new situation through the erosion of its substance².

Dialogue, compromise and real consultative processes and the like are bowing out of international politics. They are being replaced by extreme and mounting mutual distrust, the fight for economic resources, and moves closer and closer to outright confrontation, up to and including conversations on the destruction of sovereign states.

If the new technologies continue developing and advancing, whereas socio-political issues recede more and more into the background, the individual could end up cast onto the scrapheap of modernity.

And this all leads to the key problem — the process of devaluing the significance of human life, freedom and dignity.

Some causes of the contemporary crisis

As we are not seeing the emergence of a new global order and at the same time we are witnessing an escalation in chaos, it would be advisable here to contemplate the underlying causes of the developments which led to the end of the era. This is a very important statement of the issue which was articulated in part in the Conceptual Framework of this Plenary Session.

The essence and nature of the dangerous processes where we find ourselves today derive from the weaknesses, drawbacks and specific aspects of the 80-year global order now on its way out, which engendered the end of the era without leaving us with a vision of the future.

After the end of the Cold War, the global elites missed the opportunity to enable the world to advance, controlling as they did globalisation and technological progress. As external conditions and factors changed, there was no adequate response from the international political system.

The peaceful consignment of the communist system to the past, which was not coerced in any way, and the conclusive assertion of its unattainability, were accompanied not by a search for a new path to the future, but rather by proclamations on the triumphal victory of capitalism, the expansion of the NATO military alliance, a de facto refusal to help third world countries, drawing on the funds appearing in the 1990s freed up by disarmament. Russia, Ukraine and Belarus would continue to be ringfenced from Europe by the “iron curtain” project.

The resolution of this objective required a new understanding of the European space, a new concept for an association, but it was not even discussed seriously. Cooperation projects in security discussed at the highest level, such as the creation of a Russian-European anti-missile defence system with the participation of the United States, were not seen through to fruition.

To all intents and purposes, the conscious creation of the foundations for a new world order was replaced by the expansion of the global system in effect during the Cold War. The situation had changed radically, and a new future had to be built. This was stated by Charles de Gaulle, Mikhail Gorbachev, François Mitterrand and Helmut Kohl. However, all their words led to nothing concrete and in actual fact the world was to choose a completely different direction.

The individual, his or her soul and Belief, freedoms and rights did not become the raison d’être and central focus of politics after the end of the Cold War. Wealth (money) and force (weapons) became the key components of the system. It was a new era, but old systemic elements were retained.

The developments we see today both within and related to Russia are attributable to the catastrophic failure of the economic and political reforms of the 1990s implemented after the resignation of Mikhail Gorbachev. The protocol of the meeting of the US National Security Council, where they had discussed in June 1991 the reform programme of the Soviet economy assigned the name “Grand Bargain”, was declassified recently. As its authors, we had wanted to build a market economy and democracy in post-Soviet Russia and open the country up to the world. Leading world-class researchers and economics assessed this programme positively. However, high-ranking American bureaucrats did not perceive any benefits in this programme and used different methods to block it, which in the end led to the Russia that we have today.

While it goes without saying that Russia assumes full responsibility for the failure of the Russian economic and political programmes, the declassified documents are extremely revealing from the perspective of the mindset and the decision-making mechanisms deployed by the global political elite. Its representatives did not think in terms of categories of the future of the world, were unable and did not want to see the epochal opportunities that had emerged.

On the contrary, active investments in China’s economy delivered unprecedented profits for Western countries, thereby transforming the communist country into a global superpower.

Value-based politics

Soon people in a number of countries will want to find a way to extricate themselves from the political chaos. Traditionally, this could assume the form of a demand for “order”, for the election of a real “Führer”. It is easy to find such analogies in history.

Finding another way out of political chaos is contingent on understanding “where we want to go and how” — we must restore faith on what lies ahead and strive to create sustainable institutions of the future.

There are more and more grounds for assuming that the only way out of today’s populist ochlocracy does not imply the separation of the true Church and the state, but on the contrary their systematic rapprochement in the context (based on the goal) where human life and dignity take absolute precedence, in unison with an effective form of subjugation of information digital technologies and social network.

Otherwise, we can expect to see an inevitable increase in the use of political power in a way that leads to the subsequent abandonment of political legitimacy and to strategically futile and potentially explosive international relations. If we fail to create consciously and intentionally value-based political and economic institutions of the 21st century, they will be formed proceeding from the phenomena and trends that elicit the greatest concern today and merely reinforce the existing distortions of the modern world. It has to be acknowledged now that we must do our utmost to prevent the potential triggering of World War III.

The state must stop being perceived as an instrument used to perpetrate violence against, suppress and manipulate people. This should be a tool constructed to preserve individual life, his or her freedoms and creativity. This should reflect the achievement of the grand design, and this design must be organically connected to the individual.

We must strive not to restrain or “shackle” the state Leviathan. At the same time, in order to transcend the paradigm proposed by Hobbes, we need to contemplate seriously the creation of a non-Hobbesian state where the individual is the bedrock of the economy, politics and international relations. This means that we do not limit an individual’s prospects to mundane basic requirements, but instead perceive mankind in the image and likeness of God where the grand design is to unlock and develop the individual’s abilities using all available resources.

International politics is critically bereft of a transcendental dimension, devoid of the understanding that the raison d’être of politics transcends instantaneous pragmatic considerations, that statesmen assume responsibility to voters (the people) and that this is the nature of their responsibility to God.

Allowing technologies to subjugate the individual must be prohibited at all costs. The goal should be to ensure that the second half of the 21st century becomes the age of the individual, his or her freedoms and soul, and not the era of digital technologies and artificial intelligence. This should serve as the basis for truly functional state, political and social institutions. While this will be extremely hard to achieve, it is at the same time vital.

Europe from Lisbon to Vladivostok

We can only extricate ourselves from chaos if we understand initially what is the desirable, or to be more accurate, the strategic perspective that is required objectively to save mankind. Accordingly, we need to understand the raison d’être and image of the future that we must aspire to create and identify the necessary benchmarks.

In our opinion, a dignified and promising future for the second half of the 21st century would be guaranteed by a free and united Europe from Lisbon to Vladivostok.

The individual, his or her rights and freedoms must be the core and key component of qualitatively new European integration and its driver. This is what is missing today, perhaps everywhere. However, this is also a continuation of what had been achieved in Europe.

Europe is the cradle of humanism as a global idea that is common to humanity, the cradle of democracy and human rights.

The objective facing Europe is to resolve the complex issue of its lag behind technologies and to elevate humanism to a new qualitative level — the underlying principle of European culture and European socio-political thinking.

It goes without saying that a great deal was said in the past about rights and freedoms. However, it is clear to everyone today that we are veering ever closer to a large-scale crisis. That is why we must, if we want to avoid extremely painful consequences, move towards the future which must be based, as Hegel stated, not only on pragmatic or strategic considerations, but also on moral or religious grounds.

It is only on this basis that it will be possible to establish Europe as an independent centre, a pole of global politics, which is able to counter both eastern technological totalitarianism and the western technocratic concept.

It is clear that Europe can only become an independent global centre in the current environment if it is reinforced by a principally new quality.

I am referring here to a concept that is extremely contradictory and is to a large extent unacceptable today — the union of Europe with Russia. However, I do not mean that this means doing a favour or service to Russia. In our opinion, this union is the only option that ensures the preservation of both European countries and Russia. If this doesn’t happen, chaos on all sides, collapse and nuclear war, represent one possible outcome.

The Russian Federation is not simply a geographical neighbour — it is a territory that is historically, culturally and mentally (in terms of thinking) close to Europe and is part of European civilisation.

Such civilisation-based historical reality is beyond the control of bureaucrats and transient political figures. Awareness and use of this reality will make it possible to take steps towards the future, to the promise of a Big Europe — from Lisbon to Vladivostok. It may take 20-30 years to reach this destination. At the same time, however, this is the only strategy which will make it possible to preserve Russia, Europe and new sovereign states — Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova and Georgia — and thereby a realistic economic, political and military competitor to China, the United States of America, other subjects of the multipolar world in the second half of this century.

It goes without saying that it will prove extremely hard to integrate Russia in the common European project on an equal footing, given the country’s history in the 20th century and the first three decades of the 21st century, the utter failure of the post-Soviet economic and political reforms, in view of its current authoritarian-corporate system, the unfettered tragedy regarding Ukraine, as well as the country’s size and the scale of its resources. It will take decades to reformat and relaunch new profound and robust reforms, craft an integration policy and create new forms and the underlying principles of the union.

The task of advancing towards such a construct from the current situation will prove exceptionally difficult, but it would appear that there is no alternative. I could try to explain why, but that is a separate conversation entirely.

Window of opportunity

Today Europe is in the midst of a serious crisis. Regrettably, at present it is effectively no longer perceived as an international political heavyweight capable of influencing and adjusting the policy of the United States of America. Europe is locked in confrontation with Russia and is ceding global positions in a key period of contemporary global history.

However, we are on the throes of a special moment when the break-up of the previous global order will necessitate and facilitate the informed laying of the foundations of a new world. The countries, statesmen and political individuals who are cognisant of this fact and are proactive, relying specifically on such a vision of the future, will be able to play leading roles in the new world — not in terms of the sizes of their countries or the volumes of their natural resources, but instead thanks to their ability to think strategically and understand a future where human values take centre stage.

And that is the reason why we do not merely have an opportunity, but are also morally bound to speak out this very moment about issues perceived by the overwhelming majority of politicians as impossible or unacceptable in the current environment. And this should be the objective today — this means not only and not so much talking about developments and depressing forecasts, but instead looking for a way towards a dignified future.

A return to this level of the discussion cannot be deferred “until a later date” or “after the war”, because the actual fact of withdrawal from the war in the modern world will prove problematic if the public debate in Europe becomes bogged down in the narratives and models of the First and Second World Wars. For in this case it will transpire that the entire experience of post-war Europe, the construction of the European Union, its diplomacy and politics, with their focus on soft power, is not solicited.

We need to embark on the path to the future after understanding and overcoming the past. Knowing and understanding the past is indeed essential. At the same time, the past should not become an obstacle that impedes attempts to advance towards the future.

In November 2022 I transmitted in confidence to Pope Francis through his ambassador in Moscow my appeal on the critical need for the immediate signing of a ceasefire agreement between Russia and Ukraine. I would like to express here my boundless gratitude to him for his understanding and for everything that he undertook to do, which was a considerable amount, even though such a proposal had provoked an aggressive response and attacks up until recently. To all intents and purposes, my only ally for this proposal was Pope Francis who also came under pressure. Later on in 2025 Donald Trump came on board as well.

With great appreciation and respect, I would like to say that Pope Leo XIV’s position demonstrates continuity on this crucial issue: «If everyone, instead of blaming others, would first admit their own mistakes, ask God for forgiveness, put themselves in the place of those who suffer, and express solidarity with them, then the world would change… Take moral responsibility and stop the spiral of violence before it turns into an irretrievable abyss! Let diplomacy regain its role for the benefit of peoples who long for peaceful coexistence based on justice.”³ How can you not bow to these words?

There is an alternative to the deadlock that we are witnessing today: mankind has constantly been confronted with a choice between different turning points and crossroads when the competence of leaders to discern an alternative path leading to positive change has played a key role. Moreover, the ability to perceive an alternative direction of history has always been particularly important during those transitional periods when the future seemed uncertain and frequently elicited fear and consternation.

It is clear today that the key questions that need to be addressed in each of the current global conflicts have nothing to do with the situational disposition of forces on the battlefield and the control of each square kilometre by the adverse parties. The following are the key questions: what should be the basis for building the future and what should serve as the foundation of future relations? And that is why the only alternative to sleepwalking our way to catastrophe, and instead taking real steps to extricate ourselves from the chaos and embarking on the move towards a new era requires us to answer the questions of how and where we want to go.