Democratic principles and performance: what do the experts think?

Abstract

Recently, many political scientists have argued that democracy may be threatened more by the erosion of its principles, embodied in the democratic institutions, than by traditional breakdowns. This debate led to a series of initiatives that sought to identify and evaluate this process of institutional erosion. This research note contributes to these efforts by assessing the importance and current performance of a set of formal and informal democratic institutions. We present results from a survey, conducted in 2020 with 419 Brazilian political scientists, which sought their opinions on the importance of a series of democratic principles and the status of Brazilian democracy. This survey is part of the Bright Line Watch project that brings together a group of political scientists to monitor democratic practices, their resilience, and potential threats.