Modernity, Democracy and Pandemic in the Emergence of New Authoritarianisms

Abstract

Modernity and democracy constitute the ethical and political horizon of our time. Apel and Habermas' discourse ethics, Rawls' theory of justice, reflect the effort to sustain our rules based on democratic values. In this paper we will take a critical look at the situation of current democracies, as well as on the impact of the pandemic on the exacerbation of a generalized crisis of democratic systems. When analysing the situation of democracy during the covid-19 pandemic, the rise of authoritarian features has been observed: new mechanisms of violence, new forms of control, social coercion, centralization of political and economic power. The pandemic has shown a crisis in the capitalist system, revealing the null protection capacity of the global democratic system. Taking into account some authors such as Bauman, Hannah Arendt, Donatella di Cesare, Zizek and Byung-Chul Han, we will analyse the crisis of modern democracies and their authoritarian elements, from the impact of the pandemic on democratic government systems. Finally, we will analyse the elements that promote the thesis of authoritarian democracies as inherent forms to global capitalist dynamics.