POST-DEMOCRATIC ELECTORAL DYNAMICS AND THEIR RELATIONSHIPS WITH NEW POPULISMS

This article argues that the challenges faced by contemporary democracies are not related to (in)stable forms of government or electoral representation but to the incompatibility of the current Western political organization with the challenges of modernity. This is so because legal thought is often a hostage to the absence of an alternative, transiting between hegemonic models of government that have culminated in a low-intensity format of democracy. This paper uses examples from Brazil and Italy to conceptualize forms of government, and other countries like Hungary and United States to discuss how democratic backsliding is supported by the inability of Western models of democracy to process contradictions and challenges in the current historical moment. The inclusion of new, non-hegemonic institutional elements may potentially increase the state’s organizational resilience. It is necessary to recognize institutional failures and think of alternatives that allow state responses to collective problems outside the hegemonic pattern. Legal thought, therefore, should propose new perspectives compatible with the demands and transformations that democratic states and societies are experiencing.