Philip Roth and democratic backsliding: what does fictional literature have to offer to discussions regarding democratic decay?

The rise of populism and the strengthening of authoritarianism have been jeopardizing the institutions that underpin the political system and hold the government accountable. The main research problem in the debate around democratic backsliding is explaining how several liberal democracies have regressed institutionally. The academic work has been pinpointing some thoughts on how to find a pattern to this process and if it is possible to establish enough indicators to identify potential threats and forecast whether these threats will be able to undermine democratic institutions. However, previous research tends to anatomize and centralize the debate around democracy's decay to institutions recessions that ultimately constitute very reductive forms of analysis. We are particularly interested in the role of literary fiction in democracy decay research, that is, to understand how fiction literature can operate to give us more elements to think, analyze and re-imagine the world. Is literature capable of creating meaning for how authoritarian political systems develop? Considering how the current work has been framing our perceptions, we use Philip Roth's The Plot Against America (2004) and American Pastoral (1998) to argue that democracy decay needs to be rethought as a process combined not only with setbacks in the institutional sphere but also with elements on the social, cultural and psychological contexts.