Securitisation of political democracy in the context of socioeconomic inequality ; Politinės demokratijos sugrėsminimas socialinės-ekonominės nelygybės kontekste

Abstract

This dissertation explores how and to what extent social inequality distorts political equality and becomes a threat to democracy. The perception of social inequality allows not only to acknowledge the fact of its existence but also to assume it as a threat to democracy and to one of the values of democracy – political equality. The innovation of the research is assessment of the factor of socioeconomic inequality in the securitisation of democracy, the contradiction between the theory of normative democracy and the theorization on existing democracies is actualized. When applying the methods of qualitative and quantitative research, the contradiction in the description of the relationship between democracy and socioeconomic inequality is highlighted. Also , our groups of countries – zones – where democracy is securitised through socioeconomic inequality are distinguished The objective of the research is to determine the nature of the impact of the socioeconomic inequality on political equality, when there is a distinction between the de jure and de facto of political equality. Seeking to achieve this objective, the extent of the threats to democracy posed by social inequality was identified, by critically assessing the discourse on the crisis of democracy and highlighting challenges to democracy, also the multidimensional concept of social inequality was analised. The impact of socioeconomic inequality on political participation based on the analysis of changes in mediatized politics and forms of political participation helped to analyze the causality. Formulated an analytical tool of the zones of securitisation of democracy through socioeconomic inequality and used it to identify the zones of the relationship between democracy and socioeconomic inequality in the countries. The research found out that there is no universal link between democracy and socioeconomic inequality. The relationship between democracy and socioeconomic inequality has variations that are influenced by: 1) the length of the history of democracy; 2) the material well-being of the country; 3) the extent of political participation; 4) perception of social justice. The analytical tool on the relationship between democracy and social inequality opens up the perspective of exploring in more detail the transformations of established and other democracies – responses to the challenges to democracy in different groups of countries perceiving and expressing social inequality