Crises of democracy, by Adam Przeworski
(Cambridge University Press. 2019)
Przeworski
has the virtue of seriousness. He doesn’t reach easy conclusions, sometimes he
rather reaches intuitions to which he arrives by means of the serious and
complete study of his subject. Perhaps it is not an author for the general
public, but it is for all of us who are permanently interested in democracy.
Another
virtue of our author is his intellectual honesty. He specifies what he
understands by "democracy", for him this is "a political arrangement
in which people select governments
through elections and have a reasonable possibility of removing incumbent governments
they do not like" (p. 5), accepting that it is a minimal and electoral
concept.
Continuing
with the concern he expressed in his previous book (“Why bother with elections?”),
Przeworski delves into the problems of democracy from the expectations that
those who participate in the elections, both winners and losers, can form.
Consider that they are a mechanism to peacefully process conflicts in society
(not to end them) as long as several assumptions are met:
1.
Parties can structure conflicts through elections, which implies a certain
degree of control over their membership.
2.
Parties have incentives to play according to the rules (which implies that they
do not lose everything or win everything, or almost not definitively)
3.
Representative institutions will have the possibility of dealing with conflicts because all forces can participate
in them.
Now
why is there a crisis of democracy? The first thing to keep in mind is that the
diagnosis depends on the definition of democracy, which in this case Adam
Przeworski has already given us, therefore his ideas may not be applicable to
other cases in which a broader definition or diverse. The second is that our
author affirms that democracy fails when one of the following two cases occurs:
•
The electoral results have no effect on people's lives. Everything remains the
same even if the ruling elite is replaced.
•
Those who win abuse their power to stay in government by eliminating or greatly
reducing the competitiveness of elections.
The
book makes a pleasant and pertinent review of different cases of failed
democracies, likewise lists the main problems of current democracies through
the results of different statistical studies. It deals with the issue of the
weakening of these regimes, which has to do with the points already mentioned;
largely in the weakening of the parties; It also addresses the weakening of
democracy by the action of governments through a slide to authoritarianism that
seems, step by step, constitutional, illustrating this with recent cases such
as those of Poland, Turkey and Hungary.
He
is moderately pessimistic (on a par with Madeline Albrigth,
author of "Facism: A warning") and continues to insist on the
undemocratic mood of our representative regimes. In the end it leaves an
ominous message: this crisis that is being experienced has deep roots in the
economy and in society itself.
In
short, it is a well-written book, thought less as a best seller and more as a
serious and responsible diagnosis. Of course I recommend reading it but I
suggest, as in the case of any other book of this type, be careful when
applying it without further ado to the case of a specific country, and start
from the basis of what the author understands by democracy, either to share
your concept or, if not, not to use it.
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