Democracy as an evolutionary process

In this chapter we argue that contemporary Democracies undergo intense political processes of competitive transformation, in such a way that they can be analyzed as evolving complex systems. We draw upon Schumpeterian evolutionary economics, to explore how local and global interactions between heterogeneous boundedly-rational citizens and platforms, innovative processes of competition to reach power and gradually transform society, and the co-evolution between the political and the economic realms, all lead to institutional transformations underlying political and economic change. The evolutionary approach to Democracy highlights new political paradoxes and dilemmas that must be explored, monitored and faced in a dynamic way. We claim that there exists a fruitful evolutionary approach to political economy that can add surprising findings to those provided by Public Choice theory and Neoclassical Welfare Economics