POLITICAL ASPECTS OF THE KNOWLEDGE SOCIETY IN LATVIA: NEOLIBERALISM, SCHUMPETERIAN DEMOCRACY AND POPULISM

The term knowledge society refers to the specific form assumed by the capitalist system in the last forty years, and it also represents its specific social, economic, ideological, and political systems. Although there is a strong rhetoric denying it, it is quite obvious that politics and economics are interconnected and that their relationship influences the social dynamics by establishing specific patterns of ideological dominance. One characteristic of the knowledge society is the negation of any form of connection between these variables while denying its ideological character. The alleged separation of the political from the economic and the social forms the basis of Schumpeterian democracy, which becomes the knowledge society's political model, just as neoliberalism becomes its economic model. This paper analyses the specific patterns of this model in Latvia.