Populism, Polarization, and the Erosion of Democracy: A Political Sociology of Contemporary Backsliding

Abstract

This paper examines the convergence of populism, affective polarization, and democratic backsliding as an interlocking sociological phenomenon rather than a set of isolated political events. Drawing on political sociology's theoretical traditions, from classical modernization theory to contemporary accounts of institutional erosion, the paper argues that democratic decline in the twenty-first century typically proceeds through incremental, often legally sanctioned processes of executive aggrandizement rather than sudden ruptures such as coups. It shows that this erosion is enabled by deeper social transformations: the hollowing out of intermediary institutions that once linked citizens to political parties, the restructuring of the public sphere by algorithmically driven digital media, and the psychological dynamics of status threat and identity-based sorting that make authoritarian appeals attractive to specific social constituencies. The paper further explores the gendered dimensions of contemporary far-right mobilization and situates recent global trends, drawing on 2025–2026 data from the V-Dem Institute and Freedom House, alongside illustrative national trajectories in Hungary, Turkey, India, Brazil, and the United States. It concludes that while backsliding has become historically widespread, it is not irreversible, and that political sociology's task going forward is to identify the social conditions, associational density, resilient independent media, and civil society mobilization, that make democratic resistance and recovery more likely to succeed.