Plebiscitarianism and Democratic Society. An Outline

Contemporary democracy is experimenting a new way of its history, which will presumably reshape some basic assumptions of political modernity as the ones which refer to the grounds of legality, legitimacy and participation. Nonetheless, the very product of today democracy's development, in Europe as well as in the US, appears the resurgence of some plebiscitarian characters that firstly appeared at the origin of democratic age. According a renowned scholarship populism specifically characterizes a form of pathology of modernity; this is what recent history of democracies like Italy, Spain, Greece, as well as the ones of the East-European region is reminding to us. Fundamentally, they are suffering the crisis of politics that overall seems to be the pathology of post-modern societies. In order to work for a reply to this question, this chapter discuss the twenty-first century revival of plebiscitarianism in western societies, focusing on the social structure as well as the political culture of their democratic regimes. Accordingly, the paper will address three cardinal issues: 1. the relation between democracy and parliamentary representation; 2. the role that demagogy plays in the 'rhetoric' of political discourse; 3. the transformation of political parties form the model of mass party to the one of leader's party. Weber's sociology of political party and his idea of constitutional development in the nineteenth century parliamentary regimes will be taken into account as heuristic tools of primal relevance. Nonetheless, this research maintains as its own main focus to illuminate what we can take as new from the very transformation of political sphere in our contemporary fragmented societies.