How Democracies Die

by Steven Levitsky, Daniel Ziblatt

Overview

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Comprehensive, enlightening, and terrifyingly timely.”—The New York Times Book Review (Editors' Choice)

WINNER OF THE GOLDSMITH BOOK PRIZE • SHORTLISTED FOR THE LIONEL GELBER PRIZE • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post • Time • Foreign Affairs • WBUR • Paste

Donald Trump’s presidency has raised a question that many of us never thought we’d be asking: Is our democracy in danger? Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt have spent more than twenty years studying the breakdown of democracies in Europe and Latin America, and they believe the answer is yes. Democracy no longer ends with a bang—in a revolution or military coup—but with a whimper: the slow, steady weakening of critical institutions, such as the judiciary and the press, and the gradual erosion of long-standing political norms. The good news is that there are several exit ramps on the road to authoritarianism. The bad news is that, by electing Trump, we have already passed the first one.

Drawing on decades of research and a wide range of historical and global examples, from 1930s Europe to contemporary Hungary, Turkey, and Venezuela, to the American South during Jim Crow, Levitsky and Ziblatt show how democracies die. Now the question is, can our democracy be saved?

Praise for How Democracies Die

“What we desperately need is a sober, dispassionate look at the current state of affairs. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, two of the most respected scholars in the field of democracy studies, offer just that.”—The Washington Post

“Where Levitsky and Ziblatt make their mark is in weaving together political science and historical analysis of both domestic and international democratic crises; in doing so, they expand the conversation beyond Trump and before him, to other countries and to the deep structure of American democracy and politics.”—Ezra Klein, Vox

“If you only read one book for the rest of the year, read How Democracies Die. . . .This is not a book for just Democrats or Republicans. It is a book for all Americans. It is nonpartisan. It is fact based. It is deeply rooted in history. . . . The best commentary on our politics, no contest.”—Michael Morrell, former Acting Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (via Twitter)

“A smart and deeply informed book about the ways in which democracy is being undermined in dozens of countries around the world, and in ways that are perfectly legal.”—Fareed Zakaria, CNN

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781524762940
Publisher:	Crown Publishing Group
Publication date:	01/08/2019
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	19,388
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.70(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt are Professors of Government at Harvard University. Levitsky’s research focuses on Latin America and the developing world. He is the author of Competitive Authoritarianism and is the recipient of numerous teaching awards. Ziblatt studies Europe from the nineteenth century to the present. He is the author, most recently, of Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy. Both Levitsky and Ziblatt have written for Vox and The New York Times, among other publications.

Read an Excerpt

We tend to think of democracies dying at the hands of men with guns. During the Cold War, coups d’état accounted for nearly three out of every four democratic break­downs, and more re­cently, military coups toppled Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi in 2013 and Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra in 2014. In these cases democracy dissolved in spectacular fashion, through military power and coercion.

But there is another way to break a democracy. It is less dra­matic but equally destructive.

In Venezuela, for example, Hugo Chávez was a political outsider who railed against what he cast as a corrupt govern­ing elite, promising to build a more “authentic” democracy that used the country’s vast oil wealth to improve the lives of the poor. Skillfully tapping into the anger of ordinary Venezuelans, many of whom felt ignored or mistreated by the established political parties, Chávez was elected president in 1998. As a woman in Chávez’s home state of Barinas put it on election night, “Democracy is infected. And Chávez is the only antibiotic we have.”

When Chávez launched his promised revolution, he did so democratically. In 1999, he held free elections for a new constituent assembly, in which his allies won an overwhelming majority. It wasn’t until 2003 that Chávez took his first clear steps toward authoritarianism, stalling a referendum that would have recalled him from office. In 2004, the government blacklisted those who had signed the recall petition and packed the supreme court. The chavista regime grew more repressive after 2006, closing a major television station, arresting or exiling opposition politicians, judges, and media figures on dubious charges, and eliminating presidential term limits so that Chávez could remain in power indefinitely. After Chávez’s death a year later, his successor, Nicolás Maduro, won another questionable reelection. It was only when a new single-party constituent assembly usurped the power of Congress in 2017, nearly two decades after Chávez first won the presidency, that Venezuela was widely recognized as an autocracy.

This is how democracies now die. Blatant dictatorship—in the form of fascism, communism, or military rule—has dis­appeared across much of the world. Military coups and other violent seizures of power are rare. Most countries hold regular elections. Since the end of the Cold War, most democratic breakdowns have been caused not by generals and soldiers but by elected gov­ernments themselves. Like Chávez in Venezuela, elected leaders have subverted democratic institutions in Georgia, Hungary, Nicaragua, Peru, the Philippines, Poland, Russia, Sri Lanka, Turkey, and Ukraine. Democratic backsliding today begins at the ballot box.
 
How vulnerable is American democracy to this form of breakdown? The foundations of our democracy are certainly stron­ger than those in Venezuela, Turkey, or Hungary. But are they strong enough? Answering such a question requires stepping back from daily headlines and breaking news alerts to widen our view, drawing lessons from the experiences of other democracies around the world and throughout history.

We know that extremist demagogues emerge from time to time in all societies, even in healthy democracies. The United States has had its share of them, including Henry Ford, Huey Long, Joseph McCarthy, and George Wallace. An essential test for democracies is not whether such figures emerge but whether political leaders, and especially political parties, work to prevent them from gaining power in the first place—by keeping them off mainstream party tickets, refusing to endorse or align with them, and when necessary, making common cause with rivals in support of democratic candidates.

Once a would‑be authoritarian makes it to power, democra­cies face a second critical test: Will the autocratic leader subvert democratic institutions or be constrained by them? America failed the first test in November 2016, when we elected a president with a dubious allegiance to democratic norms. How serious is the threat now? Many observers take comfort in our Constitution, which was designed precisely to thwart and contain demagogues like Donald Trump. Our Madisonian system of checks and balances has endured for more than two centuries. It survived the Civil War, the Great Depression, the Cold War, and Watergate. Surely, then, it will be able to survive Trump.

We are less certain. Historically, our system of checks and balances has worked pretty well— but not, or not entirely, because of the constitutional system designed by the founders. Democracies work best— and survive longer— where constitutions are reinforced by unwritten democratic norms. Two basic norms have preserved America’s checks and balances in ways we have come to take for granted: mutual toleration, or the understanding that competing parties accept one another as legitimate rivals, and forbearance, or the idea that politicians should exercise restraint in deploying their institutional prerogatives.

The erosion of our democratic norms began in the 1980s and 1990s and accelerated in the 2000s. By the time Barack Obama became president, many Republicans, in particular, questioned the legitimacy of their Democratic rivals and had abandoned forbearance for a strategy of winning by any means necessary. Donald Trump may have accelerated this process, but he didn’t cause it.

The weakening of our democratic norms is rooted in extreme partisan polarization— one that ex-tends beyond policy differences into an existential conflict over race and culture. And if one thing is clear from studying breakdowns throughout history, it’s that extreme polarization can kill democracies.

There are, therefore, reasons for alarm. Not only did Americans elect a demagogue in 2016, but we did so at a time when the norms that once protected our democracy were already coming unmoored. But if other countries’ experiences teach us how democracies can die at the hands of elected officials, they also teach us that breakdown is neither inevitable nor irreversible.

Many Americans are justifiably frightened by what is happening to our country. But protecting our democracy requires more than just fright or outrage. We must be humble and bold. We must learn from other countries to see the warning signs— and recognize the false alarms. We must be aware of the fateful missteps that have wrecked other democracies. And we must see how citizens have risen to meet the great democratic crises of the past, overcoming their own deep-seated divisions to avert breakdown. History doesn’t repeat itself. But it rhymes. The promise of history, and the hope of this book, is that we can find the rhymes before it is too late.
 
Reprinted from HOW DEMOCRACIES DIE Copyright © 2018 by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt. Published by Crown Publishers, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC.

Editorial Reviews

Levitsky and Ziblatt show how democracies have collapsed elsewhere—not just through violent coups, but more commonly (and insidiously) through a gradual slide into authoritarianism. . . . How Democracies Die is a lucid and essential guide to what can happen here.”—The New York Times

“The most important book of the Trump era was not Bob Woodward’s Fear or Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury or any of the other bestselling exposes of the White House circus. Arguably it was a wonkish tome by two Harvard political scientists, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, published a year into Donald Trump’s presidency and entitled How Democracies Die.”—The Economist

“If you want to understand what’s happening to our country, the book you really need to read is How Democracies Die.”—Paul Krugman

“Fair warning: reading Levitsky and Ziblatt will leave you very, very unsettled. They make a powerful case that we really and truly are in uncharted territory, living in a moment when the line between difficult times and dark times has blurred.”—Washington Monthly

“Carefully researched and persuasive . . . the authors show the fragility of even the best democracies and also caution politicians . . . who think they can somehow co-opt autocrats without getting burned. . . . How Democracies Die provides a guide for Americans of all political persuasions for what to avoid.”—USA Today

“Scholarly and readable, alarming and level-headed . . . the greatest of the many merits of Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt’s contribution to what will doubtless be the ballooning discipline of democracy death studies is their rejection of western exceptionalism.”—The Guardian

“[An] important new book.”—Nicholas Kristof, The New York Times

“The political-science text in vogue this winter is How Democracies Die.”—The New Yorker

“How Democracies Die studies the modern history of apparently healthy democracies that have slid into autocracy. It is hard to read this fine book without coming away terribly concerned about the possibility Trump might inflict a mortal wound on the health of the republic.... It is simplistic to expect boots marching in the streets, but there will be a battle for democracy.”—Jonathan Chait,
New York magazine

“The great strength of Levitsky and Ziblatt’s How Democracies Die is that it rejects the exceptionalist account of US democracy. Their lens is comparative. The authors say America is not immune to the trends that have led to democracy’s collapse in other parts of the world.”—Financial Times

“A powerful wake-up call.”—Foreign Affairs

“The big advantage of political scientists over even the shrewdest and luckiest of eavesdropping journalists is that they have the training to give us a bigger picture.... [Levitsky and Ziblatt] bring to bear useful global and historical context . . . [showing] the mistakes democratic politicians make as they let dangerous demagogues into the heart of power.”—The Sunday Times

“If this were fiction, the thrills of this book would remind you of the thrills you had when you first read 1984, It Can’t Happen Here, The Plot Against America and The Handmaid’s Tale. If this were fiction, you could lie in the sand and enjoy the read. But this book is not fiction. And this book is not just about the past. And this book is not just about other countries. [It] should be on your reading list this summer.”—Tufts Now

“Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt offer one of the best forensic accounts available of the crimes against democracy in America.... The diagnosis is compelling, and their book is essential, even compulsive, reading.”—Survival: Global Politics and Strategy

“[How Democracies Die] is a stellar deep-dive into a series of modern democracies that ceased to be.”—Daily Kos

"Maybe have a drink before digging into this one. Levitsky and Ziblatt trace the fall of democracies throughout history with agonizing clarity, going right up to our current perilous moment.”—Entertainment Weekly

“Levitsky and Ziblatt are not entirely pessimistic . . . but they leave readers in no doubt that they should be worried about the state of American democracy.”—Slate

“Chilling . . . A provocative analysis of the parallels between Donald Trump's ascent and the fall of other democracies.”—Kirkus Reviews

“Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt have offered a brilliant diagnosis of the most important issue facing our world: Can democracy survive? With clinical precision and an extraordinary grasp of history, they point to the warning signs of decay and define the obligations of those who would preserve free government. If there is an urgent book for you to read at this moment, it is How Democracies Die."—E.J. Dionne Jr., co-author of One Nation After Trump
 
“Levitsky and Ziblatt are leading scholars of democracy in other parts of the world, who with great energy and integrity now apply their expertise to the current problems of the United States. The reader feels the intellectual excitement, and also the political warning, as the authors draw the connections from their own vast knowledge to the chaos that we experience each day.”—Timothy Snyder, author of On Tyranny

“We live in perilous times. Anyone who is concerned about the future of American democracy should read this brisk, accessible book. Anyone who is not concerned should definitely read it.”—Daron Acemoglu, co-author of Why Nations Fail

“Readers will not find an anti-Trump screed in How Democracies Die. The book is more erudite than alarmist . . . but that makes [Levitsky and Ziblatt’s] clarity on the risk of both Trump and wider political developments all the more powerful.”—California magazine

“All Americans who care about the future of their country should read this magisterial, compelling book, which sweeps across the globe and through history to analyze how democracies die. The result is an unforgettable framework for diagnosing the state of affairs here at home and our prospects for recovery.”—Danielle Allen, author of Our Declaration and Cuz

“Two years ago, a book like this could not have been written: two leading political scientists who are expert in the breakdown of democracy in other parts of the world using that knowledge to inform Americans of the dangers their democracy faces today. We owe the authors a debt of thanks for bringing their deep understanding to bear on the central political issue of the day.”—Francis Fukuyama, author of Political Order and Political Decay

“In this brilliant historical synthesis, Levitsky and Ziblatt show how the actions of elected leaders around the world have paved the road to democratic failure, and why the United States is now vulnerable to this same downward spiral. This book should be widely and urgently read as a clarion call to restore the shared beliefs and practices—beyond our formal constitution—that constitute the essential ‘guardrails’ for preserving democracy.”—Larry Diamond, author of The Spirit of Democracy

“Thorough and well-argued . . . the biggest strength of How Democracies Die is its bluntness of language in describing American history—a bluntness that often goes missing when we discuss our own past.”—Pacific Standard

“Required reading for every American . . . [How Democracies Die] shows the daily slings and arrows that can gradually crush our liberties, without the drama of a revolution or a military coup.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer

From the Publisher

Democracies are surprisingly fragile, and their success is not guaranteed. They can be undone deliberately through a coup d’état or seemingly legally through small steps. This is the message of this audiobook. The moral is to be vigilant and to resist changes in democratic norms. Fred Sanders offers an evenhanded narration, resisting the temptation to deliver it in a basso profundo voice of doom or to add false drama. He varies his tone and pacing to suit the material. The authors are academics, but the text is clear and straightforward, and they keep their examples relatively short. All of this lends itself well to audio. R.C.G. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

FEBRUARY 2018 - AudioFile

Democracies are surprisingly fragile, and their success is not guaranteed. They can be undone deliberately through a coup d’état or seemingly legally through small steps. This is the message of this audiobook. The moral is to be vigilant and to resist changes in democratic norms. Fred Sanders offers an evenhanded narration, resisting the temptation to deliver it in a basso profundo voice of doom or to add false drama. He varies his tone and pacing to suit the material. The authors are academics, but the text is clear and straightforward, and they keep their examples relatively short. All of this lends itself well to audio. R.C.G. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

FEBRUARY 2018 - AudioFile