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Democracy and distrust | 111 the machinery of the state as cartel parties’ - with falling membership and declining electoral participation, disproportionately so at the lower end of the social scale. (Streeck 2017, 6) Consequently, according to Berman and Kundnami, what we can see in Europe since the millennium is that [clenter-left parties moved to the center on economic issues while some center-right parties moderated their positions on traditional values, immigration, and other concerns related to national identity. A gap developed between voters’ preferences and what the traditional parties were offering. Old partisan allegiances lost their hold on voters; not a few drifted into apathy. Seeing an opportunity, right-wing populist parties reshaped their profiles to better meet disaffected voters’ preferences. Such parties began picking up votes and did especially well when issues such as immigration and national identity came to the fore, highlighting the contrast between populists and traditional parties. (Berman and Kundnami 2021, 23-24) From this point of view, the rise of populism in Europe can be seen not as a response to the economic crisis of 2008, or the migration crisis of 2015, or the more and more problematised issues of gender equality, LGBTI-rights, and so on. On the contrary, the rise of populism is a reaction to the strong convergence of the other parties on these issues. Many Europeans simply feel that these parties are “all the same” - there is no difference between them, i.e. “no one represents us”. LIBERAL DEMOCRACY UNDER CONSIDERATION The idea that liberal democracy is the ultimate, most developed, and most desired form of democracy became almost unquestionable after 1989. This kind of democracy is built on the merits of liberal constitutionalism, including the rule of law, the division of powers, and human rights, on the one hand, and on wide-range political representation based on universal suffrage, on the other (Hobson 2012). According to Fareed Zakaria, the balance between these two basic components of democracy (liberal constitutionalism and representative democracy) defines the nature of the system: one can function without the other, but democracy without liberal constitutionalism can only be an illiberal one (Zakaria 1997). It took almost two decades after 1989 to begin the discussion about the problems and deficits of liberal democracy. This coincided with the economic crisis of 2008, but the crisis itself was only part of the overall problem. To understand the crisis of liberal democracy, it is important to highlight that these problems have at least two different origins. The worldwide financial and economic depression, rooted in the functioning of liberal democracy,
