The Politics of Fear and the Rise of "New Despotism" Cover Image

Politika straha i uzlet „novog despotizma“
The Politics of Fear and the Rise of "New Despotism"

Author(s): Milan Podunavac
Subject(s): Political history, Transformation Period (1990 - 2010)
Published by: Fakultet političkih nauka Univerziteta u Beogradu & Fakultet političkih znanosti u Zagrebu
Keywords: democracy; crisis; populism; despotism; voluntary servitude

Summary/Abstract: The democratic optimism of the 1990s has been replaced by a particular form of public disillusionment with democracy. The crisis of democracy, accompanied by institutional deficits, confusion, low levels of management capacity to tackle poverty, unemployment, immigration, corruption, are symptoms of this condition. The global wave of populism is the sharpest expression of this political pathology. The beginning of the new century has given birth to an open hostility to democracy. Descriptive approaches based on the procedural dimension of the regime of power ("hybrid regimes", "limited democracy", "liberal democracy", "competitive authoritarianism") are proving insufficient to capture the new political system. In this paper, the author returns to the classical concept of "despotism" and shows the normative and theoretical advantages of this concept ("new despotism") in the analysis of a new regime of power that grows on the premise of growing distrust of democratic institutions.

  • Issue Year: 9/2019
  • Issue No: 3
  • Page Range: 43-55
  • Page Count: 13
  • Language: Serbian
Toggle Accessibility Mode