ContrastingModern and Contemporary Populist Regimes: From Democratization to Democratic Hybridization

Abstract

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