Abstract

MORENO BARRENECHE, Sebastián. Democracy and Its Others. A Contribution from Semiotics to the Debate on Democratic Backsliding. rev.estud.soc. [online]. 2020, n.74, pp.12-22. ISSN 0123-885X.  https://doi.org/10.7440/res74.2020.02.

The debate on democratic backsliding and its various manifestations is at the heart of contemporary political science. The purpose of this article is to present certain tools drawn from semiotics which, it is argued, can prove useful in achieving greater precision concerning the concepts used in this debate. To the extent that conceptual discussions within political science tend to be articulated on the basis of categories of meaning that mediate the interpretation of empirical evidence and social reality, this article analyzes the categories of “democracy,” “non-democracy,” and “authoritarianism,” among others, based on their positioning in a semiotic square that reveals the logical relationships between them.

Keywords : Authoritarianism; democracy; democratization; democratic erosion; semiotics.

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