His father, whom he never met, was conscripted in the Polish army in 1939 and killed in the 1940 Katyn massacre by Soviet troops.
His wife is a former senior manager at the OECD and the UN and the founding director of the Bard Center for Environmental Policy.
In Warsaw, Przeworski met a Northwestern University political science professor, R. Barry Farrell.
Farrell persuaded Przeworski to move to the United States to study political science.
He also held visiting appointments in India, Chile, Great Britain, France, Germany, Spain (Juan March Institute), and Switzerland.
Two enduring concerns in Przeworski's research have been: (1) the compatibility of democracy and capitalism, and (2) the possibility of a democratic path to socialism.
"[20] In Capitalism and Social Democracy (1985), and in the companion volume with John Sprague Paper Stones: A History of Electoral Socialism (1985),[21] Przeworski argues that European socialist parties in the first half of the 20th century faced a sequence of electoral dilemmas.
Given that manual workers were not the numerical majority in any European country, to win elections they had to choose whether or not to compromise their socialist principles and adopt a social democratic agenda to attract the support of allies, especially the middle class.
[29] Second, Gøsta Esping-Andersen argues that Przeworski is mistaken in attempting to differentiate reformist and revolutionary policies, since "we have no accepted criteria for deciding which actions will merely reflect the status quo and which will accelerate historical transformation.
"[30] Esping-Andersen suggests that policies that leftist parties adopt should be compared based on how they aid the process of class unity.
[33] He analyzes transitions to democracy using rudimentary game theory, and he emphasizes the interdependence of political and economic transformations.
On the causes of democracy, Przeworski assesses Seymour Martin Lipset’s thesis about the impact of economic development on political regimes and finds that Lipset’s argument regarding the association between a high level of economic development and the stability of democracy is supported.
[37] One reviewer argues that in this book Przeworski has gone beyond the standard minimalist conception of democracy associated with Joseph Schumpeter.
"[40] However, he cautions that, even though "democracy faces limits to the extent of possible economic equality, effective participation, perfect agency, and liberty", it is important to recognize these limits so as to better elucidate "directions for reforms that are feasible" and "not to criticize democracy for not achieving what no political arrangement can achieve.
"[42] He poses the question in the following terms: “Are there good reasons to think that if rulers are selected through contested elections their decisions will be rational, that governments will be representative, the economy will perform well, the distribution of income will be egalitarian, and people will live in liberty and peace?
Przeworski holds that “In the end, the miracle of democracy is that conflicting political forces obey the results of voting.