The Voter as the Prince's Nightmare: Machiavelli, Sloterdijk, and the Post-Democratic Art of Blocking the Transfer of Po

Peter Sloterdijk, in his new book The Prince and His Heirs, has taken up a theme that sits at the center of any serious theory of the political: power — its embodiment, its self-assertion, and its tendency to immunize itself against limitation. The book is about "great men in the age of ordinary people," about men "willing to go mad for the sake of power." Sloterdijk rereads Machiavelli in order to understand the modern type of the prince: Trump, Putin, Xi, Modi — and, by implication, Orbán — the new men of power in a world where charisma, amoralism, and media stagecraft are reshaping the old liberal procedures. Sloterdijk builds his reading on Machiavelli's foundational insight: a prince who means to hold his ground must learn "not to be good." The new autocrats, he argues, have learned that lesson.

It is a powerful theme, and a timely one. Because democracy, soberly understood, is not the rule of the good, not the rule of the educated, and not the rule of those whom philosophers have declared reasonable. Democracy is, first of all, the institutionalized possibility of a transfer of power. It lives on the fact that rule is for a limited term, that those who govern can be voted out, and that the opposition is not merely tolerated but recognized as a government-in-waiting. And this is exactly where the blind spot lies in Sloterdijk's latest intervention: he fears that the modern prince will abolish the transfer of power, but he fails to see that in Germany and Austria the firewall sells precisely that abolition as a democratic virtue.

The modern prince wants to stay. He wants power not as an office but as a permanent condition. He wants not merely to govern, but to define the very frame within which governing can be imagined at all. Sloterdijk recognizes this danger in the charismatically overcharged ruler — in Trump, in Putin, in figures who use democratic procedures in order to transform them from within. The only problem is that the same diagnosis would have to be applied to those who, invoking "Our Democracy," want to prevent the democratic transfer of power (to the right). For whoever binds democracy to the transfer of power cannot at the same time pathologize the millions of voters who want to bring such a transfer about.

This is where Sloterdijk against Sloterdijk gets interesting. Michael Klonovsky, in his reply to Sloterdijk's ORF interview, has identified the neuralgic point. There, Sloterdijk distinguishes between a reasonable multitude and a seducible one, and says of the voters of right-wing parties that they make "destructive use" of their right to vote; that they vote "expressively, not rationally." Klonovsky sharpens the point: the right-wing voter is no longer treated as a political opponent, but as a malfunction of democracy.

That is the real scandal. It is not the governing policy that opens the borders, drives up the cost of energy, damages the industrial base, relativizes public safety, and supplements democratic institutions with pre-political networks, denunciation hotlines, and state-funded campaign spaces — that is not what counts as destructive. No: the destructive one is supposed to be the voter who wants to vote that policy out. It is not the refusal of a democratic transfer of power that gets called into question, but the attempt to bring one about at the ballot box.

With that, the right to vote itself is made conditional. It no longer holds without qualification, but only within a permitted corridor of outcomes. The citizen may vote, but he is not supposed to bring the wrong side to power. He may protest, but he must not be allowed to actually govern. He may express dissatisfaction, but he must not replace the personnel, the programs, and the networks that produced that dissatisfaction in the first place. The election is thus not abolished, but hollowed out. It remains a procedure, but loses its sovereignty.

This is exactly where the post-democratic punchline lies. Post-democracy does not mean that elections no longer take place. It means that elections lose their decisive force. The democratic ritual remains, but its consequences are fenced in beforehand — morally, in the media, and institutionally. Parliament remains, but the unwanted outcome is fitted with firewalls. The opposition remains, but it is not supposed to become the government. The voter remains formally sovereign, but his sovereignty ends at the point where it might bring the wrong camp to power.

In my essay "Sloterdijk against Sloterdijk," this very inner tension was already laid out. There the issue was still Sloterdijk's recent disparagement of the AfD as a milieu — his language of distinction, his "hooligans dressed up as respectable citizens," the wine cellar, the library, the habitus, and the question of why a thinker who once analyzed cynicism, the loss of verticality, immune reactions, and the decline of bourgeois forms should shrink back, of all things, from the political form in which those very diagnoses have become effective. The thesis ran: Sloterdijk once spoke of immune reactions — and now he defames an immune reaction. He described the fractures of modernity — and recoils when those fractures, no longer merely latent but now manifest, take on political shape through the voters' answer.

The ORF interview makes that finding sharper still. Now it is no longer just about the AfD as a milieu. Now it is about the voter himself. Aesthetic distancing turns into democratic pathologization. Whoever votes for the AfD or the FPÖ supposedly does not vote rationally, but expressively. That is not merely a political misjudgment. It is a theory of restricted citizenship: a citizen is whoever stays inside the corridor. Whoever leaves the corridor becomes a non-person, a symptom, a case for counseling.

Here Sloterdijk's reading of Machiavelli touches Wolfgang Merkel's analysis of Trumpism as sultanism. Merkel reaches back to Max Weber's concept of sultanistic rule in order to avoid labeling Trump too hastily as a fascist. Sultanism means a form of rule in which free-ranging arbitrariness, personal allegiance, threat, and reward overlay the formal institutions. The institutions remain in place, but they lose their own authority. Merkel formulates the decisive sentence: Trump's sultanism does not abolish democracy — "it de-democratizes it."

In my essay "Trump as Sultan," I carried this thought further: Trump is not merely the symptom of a democracy practiced defectively, but the embodiment of a world in which geopolitical competition, geo-economic instruments of power, and imperial spheres of influence are returning. Trumpism steps into a structural deficit of sovereignty; its style is decisionist, personalized, theatrical. The institutions remain, but they are overlaid by decision; loyalty replaces procedure, proximity replaces the binding force of rules, stagecraft replaces program.

But this very analysis can be applied to the German and Austrian situation as a mirror image — and turned around. Sultanism is personal de-democratization by the prince, staged for effect: Trump with a crown. The firewall is cartel-shaped de-democratization by the elites. The sultan says: I alone decide. The firewall says: you may vote, but not in such a way that a transfer of power results from it. The two modes differ in form, in style, and in who carries them out. But both strike the same nerve of democracy: the real possibility of removing those in power.

The sultan personalizes power. The firewall anonymizes it. The sultan turns institutions into court apparatuses. The firewall turns institutions into barrages against the transfer of power. The sultan sets his own person above the procedure. The firewall sets its own morality above the outcome. The one says: I am the decision. The other says — and decides — : We are democracy.

This is precisely why Hungary has now become the test case. For years, Viktor Orbán counted in Western discourse as the very embodiment of the illiberal autocrat. Hungary was described as an "illiberal democracy"; at the same time, ahead of the 2026 election, it was pointed out that the possibility of a change of government was constrained not only politically but also institutionally, by formal and informal obstacles.

But then exactly what many critics had all but ruled out for this supposedly autocratically barricaded system actually happened: Orbán lost, and stepped down without a sound. Péter Magyar was sworn in today, May 9, 2026, as Hungary's new prime minister. His Tisza party had won a historic victory in the April 12 election, taking two-thirds of the seats.

The jubilation of the EU elite was correspondingly loud. Suddenly Hungary appeared once again as proof that democracy can work after all. Suddenly the transfer of power counted as a democratic act of purification, a liberation, the return of Europe to Budapest. What for years had been described as all but impossible was declared, the moment it succeeded against Orbán, a triumph of democratic self-correction. And there is the point: the supposed autocrat allowed the transfer of power. Hungarian democracy passed the test that no one believed it could still pass.

With that, the question comes home. Would "Our Democracy" pass the same test? Would Germany be prepared to permit a democratic transfer of power to the AfD? Would Austria be prepared to accept an FPÖ-led government not merely as an arithmetic result, but politically, as the legitimate consequence of the voters' will? Or does it turn out here that the liberal West's yardstick is asymmetrical: a transfer of power is good when it leads away from the right; a transfer of power becomes a danger when it leads toward the right.

It is precisely here that the firewall exposes itself as a post-democratic technique. It claims to be defending democracy against its enemies, but it prevents exactly what distinguishes democracy from mere domination: the real possibility of transferring governing power through an election. In Hungary, Orbán was voted out. In Germany, however, the AfD is supposed to remain shut out from access to governing power even if it becomes the strongest force. The voter may protest, but he may not govern. He may signal dissatisfaction, but he may not set off a shift in power. He may vote, as long as his ballot does not produce the wrong government.

This makes Hungary a mirror. After this election it is not Orbán who is the real touchstone, but "Our Democracy." It must now show whether its pathos about the transfer of power is meant seriously, or whether it holds only when the change runs in the desired direction. For a democracy that accepts the transfer of power only when it benefits its own milieu is no longer a democracy in the emphatic sense. It is a cartel of domination with election dates on the calendar.

Sloterdijk's Machiavelli lesson — which, for the rest, is once again a masterpiece of witty psycho-political analysis and a genuine pleasure to read — would have to begin exactly here. If the modern prince is dangerous because he does everything to stay in power, then it is not only the sultan who is the problem here. Then the thoroughly un-charismatic, indeed positively anti-charismatic cartel of a (small) grand coalition together with Greens and the Left is a problem too — a cartel that wants to block the transfer of power to the opposition absolutely, with moral, media, and institutional barriers. The sultan wants to stay even though the voter could remove him. The firewall cartel wants to make sure the voter cannot bring any alternative to power in the first place. Both damage the democracy that, lived in this way, decays into simulation — only in opposite forms.

The firewall answers the possibility of a transfer of power with a paradoxical figure: it ostensibly defends democracy by blocking the democratic transfer of power. It protects the supposedly open society by shutting a substantial share of voters out of the realm of legitimate political effect. It invokes freedom while placing coalition options, parliamentary normality, and equal institutional treatment under moral reservation. That is not the defense of democracy, but its curated simulation.

You cannot understand this process if you confuse democracy with the rule of one particular milieu. But that is exactly what happens in the phrase "Our Democracy." It sounds inclusive and yet means exclusion. It claims universality and in truth designates a vested interest. "Our Democracy" is not the democracy of all citizens, but the democracy of those who consider themselves its legitimate administrators. Whoever votes for them is reasonable. Whoever votes them out is, in and of itself, misguided or seduced.

Here lies the real opposition between democratic form and post-democratic practice. Democratic form means: every voter counts. Post-democratic practice means: not every vote may be allowed to have consequences for power. Democratic form means: the opposition can become the government. Post-democratic practice means: the opposition may remain the opposition, as long as it does not endanger the government. Democratic form means: the people can correct course. Post-democratic practice means: the people get corrected when they decide wrongly.

This is why Sloterdijk's talk of the expressive vote is so telling — and so irritating. He really ought to know better, and ought to ask himself: is the AfD vote so disturbing to the establishment precisely because it no longer wants to be merely expressive? As long as protest stays mere expression, the system can absorb it: as anger, as frustration, as unease, as raw material for social psychology. It only becomes dangerous once it wants to become the government. That is when it shows whether democracy is meant seriously.

Klonovsky's polemic therefore lands on something true. Sloterdijk, who in 2016 criticized Merkel's border policy as an abdication of sovereignty, really ought to understand why, ten years later, millions of citizens vote for a party that wants to correct that loss of sovereignty, that "rule of lawlessness" (Seehofer!). If a thinker says that a state must not destroy itself, then he cannot declare the citizen irrational the moment that citizen votes for a politics of self-preservation. From this vantage point, the AfD vote is not an expression of democratic abdication, but on the contrary the attempt to reconnect democracy with real decision.

The difference lies between expression and decision. Sloterdijk calls the right-wing vote expressive. But the right-wing voter does not merely want to express his mood. He wants to change who holds power. He wants migration, energy policy, internal security, education, industry, media power, the practices of the domestic intelligence service, and the state financing of political pre-fields not merely lamented, but decided differently. That is exactly what makes him so dangerous to the ruling milieu. The mere protest-citizen can be pitied. The potential majority-citizen has to be prevented.

That explains the increasingly sharp tone. The closer the AfD moves to real options for power, the less it is treated as political competition. It is declared an exceptional case. Its voters are not refuted, but psychologized. Their motives are not examined, but morally contaminated. Their parliamentary rights are not granted as a matter of course, but placed under reservation. Their possible fitness to govern is not tested in competition, but disputed in advance.

Machiavelli would probably have understood this process very well. Whoever holds power wants to keep it. Whoever loses it loses more than an office: access, interpretive authority, patronage, status, influence. This is why the transfer of power is the real touchstone of democratic seriousness. It is not the Sunday sermon about diversity, not the profession of faith in the constitution, not the cultivated contempt for populism or "the rabble" that decides a polity's democratic substance, but the question: when the opponent wins majorities, may he also govern?

The honest answer of the firewall system is: no. At any rate, not the AfD. Not the FPÖ. Not those forces that, from the established bloc's point of view, would not merely make different policy, but would break the monopoly on interpretation. For this has long since stopped being only about ministerial posts. It is about archives, files, funding structures, broadcasting councils, foundation money, NGO networks, the migration regime, energy narratives, the readings handed down by the domestic intelligence service, memory politics, and the moral grammar of the republic. A transfer of power to the right would not be merely a change of government. It would be a change of milieu — just as in Hungary. That is exactly why it is to be prevented here the way it was welcomed there.

And that is exactly why the AfD voter is not the enemy of the democratic assembly. He is the citizen who takes that assembly at its word. He still believes that elections must have consequences. He still believes that the opposition may become the government. He still believes that political experience — migration, energy prices, internal security, the state of the schools, industrial erosion, cultural estrangement — may be translated into electoral decisions. He is not the one who turns his back on democracy. He is the one who refuses to let democracy be reduced to a ritual without consequences for power.

Hungary has now answered this question. We still have to answer it. If even a system described for years as illiberal and autocratic can carry out a transfer of power, then the German and Austrian firewall becomes the real test of character. After this election, it is not Orbán who stands in the witness box. In the witness box stands "Our Democracy." It must prove that it loves the transfer of power not only when it runs against the right, but can also bear it when it runs toward the right.

That is the point at which Sloterdijk would have to think his own analysis through to the end. The modern prince is dangerous when he destroys removability. But an elite cartel that will not even let a removing alternative come to power is dangerous too. The loud sultan de-democratizes through decision. The silent firewall de-democratizes through exclusion. The one usurps the institution. The other usurps the very concept of democracy.

With that, the basic figure is confirmed: Sloterdijk against Sloterdijk. The Sloterdijk of the loss of sovereignty contradicts the Sloterdijk of voter therapy. The Sloterdijk who warns of the prince overlooks the cartel. The Sloterdijk who recognizes de-democratization by the sultan misjudges the de-democratization carried out by those who want to prevent the democratic transfer of power in the name of democracy.

The modern prince wants to stay even though the voter could remove him. The firewall cartel wants to prevent the voter from bringing any removing alternative to power at all. Both are de-democratization — only in different shapes. The sultan rules by personalizing power. The firewall rules by moralizing exclusion. The one says: I am the decision. The other says: We are democracy.

This is precisely why the right-wing voter is today the real nightmare of every prince. Not because he worships a new prince, but because he holds up to the existing cartel the one decisive democratic sentence: You can be voted out, and we want a real change of policy! It is exactly this sentence that the current interregnum can no longer bear. That is why the voter is pathologized as "right-wing radical." That is why his motive is psychologized. That is why his ballot is morally devalued. For to recognize him as a rational citizen would mean recognizing the possibility that he is right — and that power must change hands.

(English version of https://frank-hansel.de/der-waehler-als-fuerstenschreck-machiavelli-sloterdijk-und-die-postdemokratische-verhinderungstechnik-des-machtwechsels).