Reading time: 0 minutes
Contemporary democracies do not necessarily collapse by brutal coup d'état anymore: they are gradually fading, by slipping and hijacking their own mechanisms.
They continue to organise elections, run parliaments, produce court decisions and declare their commitment to the rule of law, while eliminating these mechanisms from their real political substance.
This paradox — coexistence of democratic forms and authoritarian practices — is one of the major features of contemporary politics. It blurs the marks, anaesthesia the societies and makes collective awareness difficult, because the rupture is more spectacular: it becomes technical, procedural, standardized.
Modern authoritarianism no longer presents itself as a frontal negation of democracy, but as its opportunistic reinterpretation: guardianship, institutional capture, transformation of democracy into a functional façade. This episode offers an analytical reading of this silent drift and weak signals that detect it.
