Concept Misformation in the Age of Democratic Anxiety: Recent Temptations and Their Downsides

abstract: Despite Giovanni Sartori’s famous warning, contemporary academia has seen a new bout of conceptual stretching, as evident in the loose, expansive usage of terms such as coup and fascism . This concept creep reflects the normative progress of recent decades, which has ruled out true fascism and deterred full-scale coups. Because these normative advances have induced remaining nefarious actors to pursue their undemocratic goals through formally democratic procedures, ambiguity has blurred conceptual boundaries. The article posits that when examining this gray area, scholars may be tempted to overuse dramatic terms because concern about new threats to democracy has motivated a turn to public intellectualism and democratic engagement. Moreover, the proliferation of social media has fueled stiff competition for public attention, which may have helped to create a penchant for stark warnings. The author argues that the resulting conceptual stretching undermines the clarity and accuracy required for academic scholarship and that such imprecision can also be counterproductive for scholars’ normative concerns. The overuse of dramatic terms risks distorting problem diagnosis, exacerbating polarization, and thus reinforcing the danger facing contemporary democracy, which arises primarily from the specific challenges that illiberal populism poses.