Clash of the titans economy versus democracy

Recently, there has been much talk of a democratic shift in industrialised countries, influenced by a changing relationship between business and politics. Terms such as post-democracy and democratically legitimised plutocracy are used to describe the current change. The aim of this paper is to examine whether a democratically legitimised plutocracy already exists in Austria in comparison to the USA. The USA is used as a country for comparison because it can be defined as a world power and has already been described by some authors as a democratically legitimised plutocracy. This can be clearly seen in recent events such as the election of Donald Trump as president. However, there are also worrying developments in Austria, such as the fact that former Chancellor Werner Faymann is now working as a lobbyist and can use his political connections to his advantage.