What are the major contributions in political theory to our understanding of the role of 'masses' in the emergence and development of authoritarianism? Populism as a framework gives primacy to the 'manipulation' of politicians and clientalist relations between them and their electorates. Yet, I'm looking for specific discussions on the "agency of masses" in such authoritarian turns, something akin to that of Hannah Arendt, for example.
Thank you for your reply. Based on google translate, you state: "The masses are the ones who make the tyrants and they are the ones who can remove them"? If so, it's hard to argue against this basic truth. Yet, I'd appreciate a more in-depth discussion on which specific ways and forms they make tyrants in modern democracies?
In one of my graduate-level political theory classes, the professor added a fiction book to the syllabus, In Dubious Battle by John Steinbeck, to analyze this. I found this text to be very insightful. In terms of formal theory, maybe the Frankfurt School authors would be helpful?
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