The Empire of Authoritarian Leaders

The book offers a critical examination of the contemporary crisis of democracy, focusing on the rise of authoritarian leaders, far-right political parties, and right-wing populism. Adopting an interdisciplinary perspective, it seeks to provide a novel framework for understanding the transformation of representative democracy in the face of resurgent authoritarianism. It challenges dominant narratives of democratic backsliding by situating the current crisis within the long-term transformation of capitalism, the modern state, and mass society, following the intellectual traces of the Frankfurt School. It introduces new theoretical concepts—such as the plebiscitary transformation of democracy, discard society, algorithmic masses, and political capitalism—to reconceptualize the transformation of political representation, the recent mass mobilization behind the far right, and the broader dynamics of global regime change.