Democratic crisis, but it depends on the eyes of the beholder

minimalist theories of democracy and the diagnosis of Brazil’s democratic crisis

Abstract

Adam Przeworski’s Crises of Democracy (2020) stands out as a work authored by someone historically linked to the normative project of minimalist democracy. Since the 1990s, Przeworski has advocated for a conception of democracy based on minimal criteria, strongly influenced by Joseph Schumpeter, who had previously formulated a democratic theory grounded in epistemic assumptions that were skeptical of the average voter and the role of the masses in legitimizing the regime. Both approaches integrate capitalist logic into democratic functioning, starting from a position of distrust in citizens’ political capacities. In his recent work, Przeworski revisits these minimalist foundations, arguing that democratic instability can be identified through the absence of basic criteria that define democracy, such as free and competitive elections. However, a crucial question arises: are these minimal criteria sufficient to interpret the complex processes of democratic crisis? This article undertakes a theoretical and conceptual review, using a deductive method, of key works by Przeworski (1999; 2020) and Schumpeter (1961), analyzing how these theories explain democratic crises. Based on a comparison between international literature and the Brazilian debate, it investigates whether these theoretical frameworks are adequate to interpret complex political realities such as Brazil’s. The central hypothesis is that although minimalist theories offer useful tools for quickly identifying institutional dysfunctions, they may be limited in capturing more subtle and profound forms of democratic crisis, as evidenced by the Brazilian case under Bolsonarism and considering the process-oriented approaches to democracy by Tilly (2013) and Dahl (2022).