In recent years a growing consensus has emerged that democracy faces a latent or a manifest crisis across the Globe. Comparative studies have shown that several democratic institutions have been undermined, checks and balances questioned, and authoritarian practices turned mainstream. At the same time, evidence amounts as to the growing disillusion with democracy among citizens of long established as well as more recently installed democracies. Also worth noticing is the rising popularity of populist leaders portrayed as the alternative to the traditional elites who are perceived as corrupt and unresponsive. Yet, we know very little about how elites themselves perceive the ongoing crisis. Aiming to contribute to fill this gap, this paper focuses on the perceptions of democracy among economic, parliamentary, and civil servant elites in Brazil in two moments in time: in the early 1990s, at the time of the so-called Third Wave of democratization, and in the early 2020s, when the narrative of the democracy backlash was already well established. Analyzing evidence for these two moments we intend to throw light into the challenges democracy faces, but also to offer new theoretical insights to analyze the democratic crisis.