Modern Democracy is very different from what existed a few centuries ago. The main reason for this is the fact that Democracy today is much more inclusive than before and covers more social groups. All citizens are equal before the law. It also has more rights guaranteed to citizens, such as civil rights, political rights, economic rights and social rights. Furthermore, there has been an increase in people's level of political participation, increasing the accountability of governments to their voters and allowing more voices to be heard in political decisions.
The secret vote, universal suffrage and direct auditable voting in plebiscites also contributed to the modernization of Democracy. There are three different phenomena occurring in different parts of the world that are associated with this democratic erosion: populism; extremism; authoritarianism.
They should not be confused with each other, but when they manifest simultaneously – which has been frequent – they bring serious problems to Democracy. Populism is a concept that has been intensely revisited in recent times, with the often negative connotation of manipulating the population's fears, needs and desires.
As a general rule, it offers simplistic – and wrong – solutions to complex problems, satisfying immediate demands, which exact a high price in the future. Thus we observe that it has a very tenuous ideological core, which is the artificial division of society into “us, the people” and “them, the dominant elite”. Generally, it has the mark of personalistic and charismatic leaders, who come to power with a very convincing speech, as protectors of the oppressed people, selling the idea that the State will be their protector, but, in practice, keeping the population in poverty, to dominate in the next elections, presenting themselves as “different from anything else in the world”, yet delivering the country into the hands of foreign conquerors belonging to the world system. Extremism, which can come from any side of the political spectrum, is characterized by intolerance, the non-acceptance of everything that is different and the rejection of political pluralism, usually resorting to threats of violence.
And authoritarianism involves brutal repression of opponents, intimidation or co-optation of controlling institutions and different forms of censorship, allowing an authoritarian regime without accountability. Authoritarianism, in turn, has been recurrent in people's lives since the beginning of the civilizing process.
With the exception of the brief and limited periods of the golden age of Athens and the Republic. In Rome, despotism, feudal rule and absolutism accompanied the entire human career. This situation only began to change with the liberal revolutions of the late 17th and 18th centuries, and Democracy was only truly established throughout the 20th century, as already mentioned. Still, there were dramatic relapses. After the Second World War, Democracy became widespread throughout the Western world, in historical processes that occurred in different parts of the planet, successively, including continental Europe, Latin America, Central and Eastern Europe and the African continent.