Democracy and Politics: An Introduction to the Special Issue of the Athens Journal of Social Sciences.

This paper is an introduction to the special issue of the Athens Journal of Social Sciences on Politics. It includes six papers, which relate to various aspects of politics in today's democracies. The first paper examines populism in selecting political parties of the European Union (EU); the second explains a political experiment performed in USA; the third discusses the prospects of the 2022 elections in Brazil; the fourth states that democracies need leaders as this is the case with Israel; the fifth looks at a real threat to democracy which is radicalism and violence using the case of the Slovakian youth; and the last paper examines a case of primary elections of a Greek political party (PASOK). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]