Democracy is an equilibrium.
Democracy is a system in which everyone assumes that they can lose elections, and they expect to win it in another chance.
In general dictators have not done better at [economic] policies than democrats—far from it. Most dictators have ravaged their countries for personal gain. Scholars have asked whether democracy helps or hurts the economic growth of poor countries and despite many surveys, have come to no conclusive answer.
Adam Przeworski is a Polish-American professor of
Political SciencePolitical Science is a social science discipline concerned with the study of the state, government and politics. Aristotle defined it as the study of the state. It deals extensively with the theory and practice of politics, and the analysis of political systems and political behavior...
. One of the main important theorists and analysers of democratic societies, theory of
democracyDemocracy is generally defined as a form of government in which all adult citizens have an equal say in the decisions that affect their lives. Ideally, this includes equal participation in the proposal, development and passage of legislation into law...
and
political economyPolitical economy originally was the term for studying production, buying, and selling, and their relations with law, custom, and government, as well as with the distribution of national income and wealth, including through the budget process. Political economy originated in moral philosophy...
, he is currently a full professor at the Wilf Family Department of Politics of
New York UniversityNew York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...
.
Born in 1940 in
WarsawWarsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River, roughly from the Baltic Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population in 2010 was estimated at 1,716,855 residents with a greater metropolitan area of 2,631,902 residents, making Warsaw the 10th most...
,
PolandPoland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
, Przeworski graduated from Warsaw University in 1961. Soon afterwards, he moved to the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, where he received his Ph.D. at
Northwestern UniversityNorthwestern University is a private research university in Evanston and Chicago, Illinois, USA. Northwestern has eleven undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools offering 124 undergraduate degrees and 145 graduate and professional degrees....
in 1966. He taught at the
University of ChicagoThe University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
, where he was awarded with the title of
Martin A. Ryerson Distinguished Service Professor. He also held visiting appointments in
IndiaIndia , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
,
ChileChile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...
,
Great BritainGreat Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...
,
FranceThe French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
,
GermanyGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
,
SpainSpain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
(
Juan March InstituteThe Juan March Institute, located in Madrid, Spain, is part of the Juan March Foundation, one of Spain's charities for social research. The objective of the institute is to achieve an effect equally through scientific publications and training the next academic generation...
), and
SwitzerlandSwitzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
. Since 1991, Przeworski has been a member of the
American Academy of Arts and SciencesThe American Academy of Arts and Sciences is an independent policy research center that conducts multidisciplinary studies of complex and emerging problems. The Academy’s elected members are leaders in the academic disciplines, the arts, business, and public affairs.James Bowdoin, John Adams, and...
, and in 2001 shared the
Woodrow Wilson PrizeThe American Political Science Association is a professional association of political science students and scholars in the United States. Founded in 1903, it publishes three academic journals...
for the book
Democracy and Development. 2010, he was awarded the
Johan Skytte Prize in Political ScienceThe Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science was established in 1995 by the Johan Skytte Foundation at Uppsala University. The foundation itself goes back to the donation in 1622 from Johan Skytte , politician and chancellor of the university, which established the Skyttean professorship of...
for "raising the scientific standards regarding the analysis of the relations between democracy, capitalism and economic development". To date, he has authored 13 books and numerous articles.
Przeworski was a member of the September Group of Analytical Marxists, but left the group in the early 1990s.
Dilemmas of Social Democratic Parties
In
Capitalism and Social Democracy Przeworski argues that European socialist parties in the first half of the 20th century faced a sequence of electoral dilemmas. The first dilemma was whether or not to participate in bourgeois elections, when
universal suffrageUniversal suffrage consists of the extension of the right to vote to adult citizens as a whole, though it may also mean extending said right to minors and non-citizens...
was progressively established in Europe. The question was whether or not participation would contribute to the struggle for
socialismSocialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
or strengthen the capitalist order. According to Przeworski, most socialist parties have opted to get involved in elections, since it was a means to advance some of the interests of workers in the short run and, as references to
Friedrich EngelsFriedrich Engels was a German industrialist, social scientist, author, political theorist, philosopher, and father of Marxist theory, alongside Karl Marx. In 1845 he published The Condition of the Working Class in England, based on personal observations and research...
and
Eduard BernsteinEduard Bernstein was a German social democratic theoretician and politician, a member of the SPD, and the founder of evolutionary socialism and revisionism.- Life :...
illustrate in Przeworski’s book, to move toward socialism.
The decision to participate in bourgeois elections led to another dilemma, according to Przeworski: given that manual workers were not the numerical majority in any European country, to win elections they had to choose whether or not to compromise their socialist principles and adopt a social democratic agenda to attract the support of allies, especially the middle class. Such compromise had major consequences for socialist parties, including the withdrawal of support of workers, the abandoning of extra-parliamentary tactics, and progressively the defection from socialist policies when in power.
Critiques to Przeworski’s account of the dilemmas of social democratic parties have been at least twofold. First, it has been shown that numerical majority is not necessary for social democratic parties to control governments, which implies that social democratic parties do not necessarily need to sacrifice workers’ votes to win elections. Second,
Gøsta Esping-AndersenGøsta Esping-Andersen is a Danish sociologist whose primary focus is on the welfare state and its place in capitalist economies. Esping-Andersen is a professor at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona , and member of the Scientific Committee of the Juan March Institute and of the Board of Trustees...
has argued that Przeworski is mistaken in attempting to differentiate reformist and revolutionary policies, since “we have no accepted criteria for deciding which actions will merely reflect the status quo and which will accelerate historical transformation”. Esping-Andersen suggests that policies that leftist parties adopt should be compared based on how they aid the process of class unity.
Recent works