The book offers a critical examination of the contemporary crisis of democracy, focusing on the rise of authoritarian leaders, far-right political parties, and right- wing populism. Adopting an interdisciplinary perspective, it seeks to provide a novel framework for understanding the
transformation of representative democracy in the face of resurgent authoritarianism. It challenges dominant narratives of democratic backsliding by situating the current crisis within the long-term transformation of capitalism, the modern state, and mass society, following the intellectual traces of the Frankfurt School. It introduces new theoretical concepts-such as the plebiscitary transformation of democracy, discard society, algorithmic masses, and political capitalism-to reconceptualize the transformation of political representation, the
recent mass mobilization behind the far right, and the broader dynamics of global regime change.

Zafer Yilmaz is Associate Professor at Ankara University and a research fellow at Alice Salomon Hochschule in Berlin. He has published widely on populism, authoritarian rule, and the authoritarian restructuring of the Turkish state in both academic journals and collective volumes. Among his books are Yeni Türkiye'nin Ruhu: Hinç, Tahakküm, Muhtaçlastirma (The Spirit of New Turkey: Resentment, Domination and Destitution), Erdogan'in Baskanlik Rejimi: Istisnai Cumhuriyetten Parsellenmis Devlete (Erdogan's Presidential Regime: From Exceptional Republic to Parcelled State), and Sagin Kasveti, Otoriter Liderler ve Çalinan Isyan (The Gloom of the Right: Authoritarian Leaders and the Stolen Rebellion), which interrogate the global rise of authoritarianism.