ABSTRACT
The growth of the right is one of the most important issues of the moment in global politics. Alliances between upper-class groups and the armed forces have historically been a major cause of military intervention in Latin America, therefore disrupting democracy, while countries with electorally viable national conservative parties have experienced significantly longer periods of democratic governance since the 1920s. Some specific authors have contested the usefulness of the left–right distinction, elaborating on the alleged “end of ideologies” at the end of the Cold War. Conservatism is thus a modern concept, which truly entered the vocabulary of politics and political science in the nineteenth century. Populism consists in the artificial division of society into two distinct categories: the people and the elite. Strong economic crises, new sociability structures, globalisation dynamics, politics in the internet, all these elements make more evident for citizens the growing “democratic charade”. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
