The imbrication and dissolution of the mass in the public, its consequences: the political instability of liberal systems

Abstract

A quick look at the current political conjunctures in the liberal political systems that were successfully organizing Western societies from the end of World War II until the last economic crisis of 2008, allows us to verify the more or less chaotic state in which many of them are found. What was once with few exceptions a bipartisan political backwater of alternations between two major and hegemonic political forces today is a gibberish of atomized and dispersed political forces throughout the political spectrum. Without removing its responsibility for the crisis, there are certain causes related to changes in the social composition of Public Opinion and the emergence of new Information and Communication Technologies that explain the great instability that has gripped Western political systems. This qualitative research develops a pertinent explanatory argument that reveals the way in which institutional changes have been affecting the traditional public social sphere, from which the governments of liberal systems are still legitimized during political processes.