A cure for the populist infection? A bigger dose of democracy!

For long time, political scientists have cultivated the idea that a country which succeeds in achieving a democratic transition, creates stable institutions, provides a robust civil society, and has achieved a certain level of wealth, has a rather low risk of an authoritarian backlash. In other words, a consolidated democratic society would create a sort of political "antibodies" able to impede the slide towards a totalitarian regime. This assumption was corroborated by the very impressive wave of democratization that took place since 1990 and, in fact, both the number and the quality of democratic regimes increased steadily. Such has been the progress of the new democracies that it suggested a sort of democratic triumphal march. Is this still true? How should we interpret the state of democracy in light of the electoral victories of Recep Erdo?an, Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orbán and, above all, Donald Trump?