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Bibliographic Details
Main Author:	Sánchez Rodríguez, Jesús
Format:	Recurso digital
Language:	English
Published:	Zenodo 2026
Subjects:	Democracy Populism Autoritarism Polarización política Ciencias Políticas
Online Access:	https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18377828
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Table of Contents:

This extensive report examines the fundamental transformation that Western liberal democracies have undergone in recent decades: the displacement of reason by emotion as the driving force of political discourse. The author argues that contemporary politics has become a battlefield dominated by visceral identities, collective grievances, and constant emotional mobilization, eroding the Enlightenment foundations of rational deliberation. The analysis identifies multiple converging causes of this phenomenon. The digital revolution and social media have created algorithms that systematically reward emotional content over analytical content, generating impermeable information bubbles where each group inhabits its own factual reality. Economic transformations, particularly the 2008 financial crisis and globalization, have fueled legitimate anxieties that populist politicians have skillfully channeled through Manichean simplifications and the construction of scapegoats. The report documents how the collapse of traditional grand ideological narratives has left a void occupied by cultural and tribal identities. Politics has shifted from being a debate about the common good to becoming an expression of emotional authenticity and group belonging. Successful leaders are no longer those who present better programs but those who connect viscerally with their followers, transgressing democratic norms in the name of "the voice of the people." The cases of the United States under Trump and Spain with its extreme polarization illustrate the systemic consequences: impossibility of evidence-based policies, erosion of countermajoritarian institutions, affective polarization that turns the adversary into an existential enemy, and the dangerous normalization of authoritarian practices. The first year of Trump's second presidency represents the paroxysm of this limitless emotionalization. The author draws disturbing historical parallels with the European interwar period, when uncontrolled emotional mobilization led to the collapse of democracies and the rise of totalitarianisms. He warns that contemporary democracies, though more resilient, face a comparable tipping point. The conclusion is sobering: without recovering a shared commitment to factual truth and rational deliberation, without strengthening institutions and revitalizing civic education, liberal democracies face a real risk of authoritarian regression. The future of democracy in the 21st century depends on our collective capacity to find a new balance between legitimate emotion and indispensable reason.

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