Revisiting democracy

reflections on collective choice

Abstract

This brief article rescues some of the central aspects about the notion of democracy throughout its historical construction process. Since the French Revolution, the idea of popular participation in politics and collective choice has faced a series of issues that have been debated by different authors. The difficulty of putting into practice a democratic political model marks a process of refinement of democratic thinking that resulted in approaches that sought to improve the mechanisms of collective choice, even skeptics who understood democracy as a system of privilege for an elite. This text sought to revisit the main problems arising from the democratic political system and collective choice. Initially, we bring the reflections of the mathematician Condorcet in France during the revolutionary era. The main contribution of the French was to reflect on the logic of legitimating the vote from the "will of the majority" and its contradictions. Then we revisit the problem of the tyranny of power, brought to light by thinkers like Madison. Finally, this text presents the debates of the skeptics of the democratic system, who thought about the role of the ruling classes in a system of popular participation, such as democracies. In summary, it was intended to make a visualization of the main problems that emerged, throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, from the search for the best model of democracy, and how these contribute to the debate about collective choices.