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.