Abstract
The thesis that democracy is slowly dying applies to countries like Hungary, Poland, and Turkey; not to rich countries whose democracy is consolidated for structural reasons and for the interests involved. Democracy was a conquest of the people that bothers the elites, but neither the elite nor the people want to replace it by an authoritarian regime. This thesis diverts attention from the real problem faced by developed countries: the failure of Neoliberalism and the neoclassical economic theory justifying it. Such failure, alongside the growing number of political exiles and immigrants and the rich-world perplexity towards Chinese developmentalism, is generating the right-wing populism and widespread malaise in the West.
Keywords:
Democracy; Neoliberalism; Populism; People; Elites; West