Capture, Distrust, the Populist Experiment, and Then What: Can the Slide into Authoritarianism be Stopped?

This paper considers the possibility of prohibiting standing political parties, and of shifting the liberal democratic governance model to reduce the role of representatives while correspondingly increasing the roles of direct democracy on one hand and of bona fide technocracy on the other. Historically high levels of distrust in governance, regular corruption scandals, the rise of authoritarianism and populism, intensifying geopolitical conflict, demographic and technological transformations, and many other factors call for critical reflection on alternative models of governance design.