The crisis of democracy and the new populism: a brief characterization

Abstract

This article aims to briefly characterize the problem of the crisis of liberal democracy and the consequent phenomenon of contemporary populism. In this sense, we will follow two steps in our argument, namely: a) we will make a characterization of contemporary sociological-historical time, having in perspective the decline of modern democracy and the consequent crisis of politics; b) based on the texts of Yascha Mounk (2019), and Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt (2018), we will analyze the crisis of liberal democracy and the forms of rise of contemporary populist leaders. The first step aims to carry out an interpretation of the historical and social phenomena that lead us to the interpretations of the historical and sociological time that the theoretical developments presented are inserted. Then, the second section, in turn, seeks to understand how liberal democracy, in this context of profound historical and sociological transformations, ends up being eroded by the rise of populist leaders who ascend to power, undermining the foundations of democratic institutions.