ContrastingModern and Contemporary Populist Regimes From Democratization to Democratic Hybridization

ENRIQUE PERUZZOTTI

Populism

Brill

Año: 2022 vol. 5 p. 141 - 156

2588-8064

The article analyses populism as a specific logic of governmental exercise that setsinto motion the pattern of transformation of contemporary democratic regimes: democratic hybridization. Democratic hybridization entails the piecemeal dismantling ofkey aspects of liberal constitutionalism that take place in an already democratized societies and is carried out by democratically elected administrations. The proposed patternof regime hybridization differs from the one described by the literature on competitive authoritarianism since it does not take place within an authoritarian regime but ina democratic one. If carried out to the end, the pattern of democratic hybridizationmight lead to the replacement of democracy with authoritarianism. Such a pattern ofpolitical change (and not the traditional pattern of regime rupture) is the main threatfaced by liberal democracies nowadays.