In Arendt, masses are distressed due to traumatic events, economic hardships imposed upon them, or political crises, systemically marginalized and pushed out of the boundaries of the political realm. Therefore, they are out of the boundaries of the ‘rational’ decision-making processes such as voting. But did Arendt include electoral behavior as irrational, mass action which, in the German case, eventually catapulted the Nazis to power through democratic means? When did German society become a 'mass' a la Arendt: when they voted en masse or when they gave in to emotional, demagogic narratives depicting particular groups as the culprit of their collective misery?
Role of the electoral process will immensely help in eradicating many social, political and economic evils, but the condition is that there should be a massive exercise through the help of various electoral processes even at the grassroot levels.
Role of the electoral process will immensely help in eradicating many social, political and economic evils, but the condition is that there should be a massive exercise through the help of various electoral processes even at the grassroot levels.
Questions that open serious discussions about the viability of democracy.
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Democracy in its various aspects, such as elections, is not an ideal system, but it is the best system available today.
@Gundogan Arendt is difficult to explain and interpret politically and intellectually. To explain her work is very difficult. However, due to the poverty, economic misery and revolution that have been pushed to worst living conditions. In the Origins of Totalitarianism Arendt discussed the intrigues and difficulty of how to classify the people, mob, masses, and tribe.
Therefore, political mobilization of the masses for electoral politics can be viewed from the "Populist Mobilization" as in the old Nazi Germany and Italian fascism. Masses can be willing tools of the dictators. In the case of Margaret 2002 explanation " Peoples, Power, Masses in Arendt philosophy.
By this, the masses can be mobilized easily by propaganda to vote in order to promote the ideology at the time. The strategy used by dictators in the mobilization of the masses as a mob "Not the People" same will be used in electoral politics mobilization.
The issue of electoral behavior is one of the topics that I am interested in studying. Please enrich the discussion to benefit
One should always have in mind Antonio Gramsci's advice on the careful distinction between 'organic' (structural) and 'conjunctural' (circunstancial) events. The former are the movements that express the struggles between the main social classes. They may be historically manifest throught specific conjunctural changes. Otherwise, such changes should be seen only as 'passive revolutions' (i.e.he gives the examples of 'cesarism' during Italian fascism, and 'bonapartism' in France up to the fall of the Paris Commune). From this standpoint
most populist regimes and movements should be seen as 'passive revolutions'. (See my 'Populism and the Catholic Church: Political Crisis in Brazil, 1964', NY: Nova Science, 2010. ISBN 978-1-61728-296-6.
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