ABSTRACT
The association of strong leadership with authoritarian, fascist, or totalitarian regimes is a fact of the 20th century. Nevertheless, even during such periods, the liberal democracies have also produced some figures of leaders whose aim was not to destroy democracy but to defend it against such enemies and to build other answers to the economic crisis or to the transformations of society. Is the same process taking place today? Or does the rise of right-wing populisms across the Western world face only a neoliberal form of government in which political leadership is very reduced?
