Pixabay. Public domain.
It cannot be denied that in a large part of the democratic world there is currently much disbelief in politics, and recent events have challenged the notion that politics is capable of changing people’s lives for the better.
On the one hand, a discourse of fear is pointing to the need to protect voters and citizens from all that is ‘different’, guaranteeing individual privileges on the basis of the polarization narrative according to which it all comes down to ‘us against them’. Political elites are proving incapable of understanding the new demands of society and establishing a dialogue with citizens, thus leaving a void which adventurers and populists are only too eager to fill. These populist figures are usually unprepared to deal with the complexity of public affairs and to come up with plausible alternatives for the management of the public good.
