How Democracy Can Deepen
Lessons from my new research on when and why elites sometimes let go of their privileges
Many countries today, including the US, are struggling with their democracies. Elite influence and deep inequalities are generating major headwinds. Some democracies are holding up. Others, like the US, Hungary, Romania, Argentina, and Peru – where I’m writing from this week – are backsliding. And in some countries, like El Salvador, democracy has entirely collapsed.
Against this challenging backdrop, I got together with two other democracy scholars to try to understand the opposite: when it is that democracy successfully deepens. That often entails action by privileged individuals, and the leaders and political parties tied to them, to level the playing field and cede some of their advantages.
As you can imagine, this doesn’t happen so often. That’s part of what makes understanding it all the more important. Many democracies have political, economic, and social inequalities baked into their very DNA. In my book Authoritarianism and the Elite Origins of Democracy, my co-author Victor Menaldo and I examined all transitions to democracy around the globe over the last two centuries and documented a remarkable fact: around two-thirds of all democracies are inaugurated and begin operating with constitutions written under the previous authoritarian era. That’s also true since World War II. Many countries operate with these authoritarian constitutions for years, so that at any given time somewhere between one-third and one-half of democracies use them, as the figure below indicates.
The reason, we argue, is that most transitions to democracy occur under a strong elite hand. Political elites and their economic allies from the authoritarian era have power, connections, and influence that enable them to navigate a transition to democracy without sacrificing their interests. To the contrary, in many cases they are the leading voices on its terms, including whether to transition in the first place, the timing and pacing of transition, the content of the constitution and its institutions and key laws, and the rules of elections.
Many lessons about democratic deepening come from these countries. Since 1950, some 31% of democracies with constitutions inherited from the authoritarian past – such as France, Mexico, and Nigeria – have amended or scrapped those charters, driving more distance between the lines in the figure above. There are also lessons to learn even from countries that have refined their democracies in other ways, and from countries like the US that were founded with some core democratic institutions to begin with.
Economic crises, societal shifts associated with major forces like globalization, and even the death of former dictators or other powerful leaders can catch elites off balance and give the opposition a window of opportunity to topple the status quo. But that’s not all. There are also instances when elites themselves lead or actively go ahead with major reforms to a status quo that favors them.
History provides numerous prominent examples of political and economic elites with sincere policy preferences located to the right of proposals or propositions for legal reform who make the strategic decision to join an increasingly popular progressive cause. In our recent paper, we studied in depth one of these examples: Chilean pension reforms in the last five years.
Chilean society exploded in mid-October 2019. An increase in subway fares sparked violent street protests. There was widespread looting of supermarkets and other businesses. The unrest rapidly grew into a nationwide movement. Protesters' demands included not only a reversal of the metro fare increase but also deeper structural reforms to address inequality and foster greater social inclusion. Among the central demands were decentralizing the political system and introducing formal mechanisms for citizen consultation and referendums, enshrining greater rights for labor unions, establishing health care and education as fundamental rights, guarantees of equality for women, greater autonomy for Indigenous groups, and a total overhaul of the pension system.
The pension system, which failed to provide adequate retirement security for millions of Chileans and had been a subject of public debate for years, crystalized particular ire against Chile’s conservative elite class. That elite class, embodied by President Sebastian Piñera, had deep roots in the authoritarian rule of General Augusto Pinochet. It also had insider connections with the privileged private firms that largely ran the pension system. These firms had enjoyed favor from Pinochet and his legacy as well as constitutional protections against pension reform for decades.
The social unrest caused politicians to scramble. Far-left legislators supported demands for change and spearheaded reform proposals. Activists and political entrepreneurs spread effective messages about the shortcomings of the pension system through Twitter, newspapers, TV and radio. Stories of impoverished retirees circulated, along with slogans linking pensions to dignity for the elderly. Legislators to the right of the reform proposals began to recognize the groundswell of support for reform and were forced to consider the electoral imperatives of conforming with expressed public support for reform.
Conservative politicians and business interests jumped on board the bandwagon, judging that it was in their best interest to get behind what was once a fringe movement. Members of the right, and President Piñera, ultimately supported several constitutional reforms enabling pension withdrawals during the pandemic that weakened the prevailing system and increased the chances of further future changes. In exchange for sacrificing some of their longer-term goals and ideological beliefs, they were able to wring concessions that ensure that the changes they supported were rendered less radical. And by publicly changing their vote in light of the popular support for political change, they gained the chance to politically survive.
It turned out to be a worthy gamble: the political pendulum swung back away from the far left in Chile and its authoritarian-era constitution was not entirely scrapped. Even so, the changes to the system and the precedents that were set in the meantime had considerable implications for a deepening of Chilean democracy.
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The takeaway lesson is that even in challenging institutional settings, overwhelming and unforeseen popular pressures for change under democracy can generate bandwagoning for reform among politicians across the political spectrum. Privileged elites and those with ties to a prior authoritarian era may support changes that undermine their privileges in order to retain their political positions. While the result may be moderate reform rather than a radical overhaul, the change is nonetheless real.
In order to seize that change, reformers have to be organized and ready to act when the time comes – and work hard to broaden their coalition. Doing so can yield a more inclusive and representative democracy that works on behalf of more people.
Image of protests in Chile is from October 2019 in Plaza Baquedano (via Wikimedia Commons). Image of march for dignified pensions is from https://elsiglo.cl/miles-colmaron-la-alameda-por-pensiones-dignas/.
The research behind this post is Albertus, Michael, Victor Menaldo, and Jorge Rojas-Vallejos. "Why elites sometimes undo their own constitutional privileges." World Development 192 (2025): 107024.