Democracias em crise

um balanço bibliográfico de um debate da teoria política contemporânea

Abstract

This article takes stock of the bibliography published in the last decade about the crisis of democracies. In relation to the causes, symptoms, effects, and strategies to overcome this crisis, two main lines of interpretation can be distinguished. On the one hand, there are works of the liberal-democratic tradition, to which this crisis is mainly a result of the rise of populism, and it can and must be overcome by restoring the operating conditions of post-war democracy. On the other hand, there are works, critical of liberal democracy, which maintain that this crisis is inseparable from the dynamics of capital itself, which have been accentuated by neoliberalism, and that confronting it entails a rupture with this form of social organization. In general, this debate is marked by a high degree of normativity, and lacks greater conceptual clarity and greater knowledge about the peripheral realities, where democracy was often a late, precarious and partial experience.