In the past decades of late modernity, the political system of developed democracies has been deeply transformed. a new configuration of politics has emerged in which actors increasingly rely on popular media channels, rather than party infrastructures, in their efforts to connect and control their constituencies. the emerging system of late modern politics in developed countries can be described with the term “mediatized populist democracy.” Late modern politics, through its transition from “party-based representative democracy” to “mediatized populist democracy,” has adopted a new, populist logic that is very different from the old logic of class (group) representation. Late modern politics is populist since its prime reference point is “the people,” who can be reached through popular media channels (see McGuigan 1992), and not the macro-group (class, ethnic, religious group), which once could be reached through mass party membership. the media-using “people” of late modern democracy is, of course, envisioned as a fragmented and plural conglomerate rather than a pure and coherent entity. Mediatized populist democracy has emerged in the last decades because it has seemed to suit better the individualized, pluralized settings of late modern middle-class society, where citizens do not feel they self-evi-
For an explicit theory of this transition, see Mair 2002 and Ankersmit 2002; for very similar arguments, see Manin 1997 and Crouch 2004; and for an early formulation, see Hall 1983.