The world order established at the end of World War II glimpsed to achieve democracy as an ideal form of government based on three fundamental ideas: popular election of the authorities through free, competitive, equal and secret elections; Division of powers, and expansion of human rights within the framework of the rule of law. All this, in addition, was carried out in a scenario of increasing recognition of pluralism.
This panorama was strengthened within the framework of the “third wave” theorized by Samuel Huntington, which includes the democratizing processes that occurred in the two decades that separate those from southern Europe and those from the East. The failure of communism, developmental militarism and different models of sultanist regimes was evident, and almost all Latin American countries were inserted in that movement. Only diverted cases such as that of Cuba were maintained, but most apparently walked on the path of the so -called democratic consolidation.
The success of this transformation at the end of the last century resulted in a novel impulse within political science and an agenda of the “quality of democracy” consisting of the measurement of their behavior according to theoretical approaches initiated and developed, among others, by Guillermo O’Donnell and Leonardo Morlino. This allowed important advances in democracy analysis based on the evaluation of its components. Freedom House, The Economist Intelligence Unit, the Bertelsmann Foundation, international idea and the V-DeM project were the most precarious agents to channel these studies.
The moment of global inflection that pandemia meant the symptoms of fatigue that had been suffering from a good number of countries located at different levels of the democratic framework. The distrust of institutions, the disqualuation of democracy and the crisis of political representation evidenced in fragmented, volatile parties and with a diminished and blurred identity were patent. This was also articulated with the centrality of unleaded leaders and launched to the political arena by communication expert consultants. In addition, in most Latin American countries the poor results of the confrontation of citizen insecurity and corruption increased the discredit of politics.
This scenario was completed with a society transformed by the Exponential Digital Revolution: the growing individualism, the articulation of the different identities in the newly emerged social networks (disrupting the previous forms of social interaction), the new mechanisms of information and communication that reached people in a personalized, immediate and viral way, and the empire of post -truth (with the presence of forms of manipulation of reality). It was, in short, the consolidation of a “tiredness society”, according to Byung-Chul Han, deepening of the state of “liquid society”, as Zygmunt Bauman theorized, to which the consumption society had avoided.
At present, it seems that democracy ceased to be the engine of political development that was during the last half century. Nothing allows us to see that the undoubted consensus is being maintained. The signals evidence.
In addition, the world is led by business technological conglomerates in constant growth and an unknown financial size. They act in conjunction with the alienation of human beings, who develop new forms of collective action incompatible with the way in which democracy evolved today, and that open the doors to an unusual and uncertain scenario of post -democracy where affective polarization is an effective instrument.
Within the ambiguity of the term, and in the midst of the dismantling of multilateralism as a way towards a minimally operational world order, three phenomena are glimpsed, to which the disruption gestated by artificial intelligence (AI) is added.
The first of these refers to the self -destructive capacity that was always considered inherent in democracy. There are internal actors whose behavior is unfair, or even “semileal”, as Juan Linz denounced. An example is that of Vladimir Putin, who was once president thanks to the popular vote, although he immediately dedicated himself to eroding the democratic creed crushing the opposition and taking all the springs of power. The same did Chavismo, Daniel Ortega and Nayib Bukele with devastating results for their countries.
The second is related to the dangerous via enlisted by Donald Trump and the dozen epigons he has in Europe and Latin America. Its behavior cits human rights by blocking inclusion policies, diversity and equality, and through the creation of scapegoats on which to dump the anger of a citizenship seduced by multiple forms of manipulation of reality. Nationalist Soflama, as well as the attack on the independent media, to the intellectuality and the opposition groups attempt against any scenario of consideration and respect for pluralism.
Third is the model of undoubted economic success and the enormous social transformation in the key to urbanization and increase in the educational and health standards that China exhibits. Thus, Chinese authoritarianism has become an incentive that encourages the maintenance of non -democratic forms in other countries.
For its part, AI is being a disruptive instrument that acts dramatically through misinformation and drives knowledge of people’s preferences, becoming obsolete conventional political participation. It will not be strange then that the way in which the electorate periodically attends the polls is immediately replaced, as well as the choice of their representatives.
The post -democracy, in short, is an uncertain space that responds to the challenges of digital society, while it is a consequence of the historical siege suffered by representative democracy and the failures of this in the confrontation of citizenship problems and in attention to their demands.
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