How Democracies Fall Apart How Democracies Fall Apart An interview with Adam Przeworski. Patrick Iber: Over the course of your career, you have studied how democracies fall apart and get put back together. Iber: You’re known for a minimal definition of democracy: democracy is a system in which parties lose elections. According to Marx, workers would become a majority in capitalist societies, and because workers would vote for socialism, electoral victory was inexorable. He is the author of many books, including Capitalism and Social Democracy and Crises of Democracy.