How Democracies Die: Chapter 3 Summary & Analysis

While party gatekeepers generally did not support Trump, Levitsky and Ziblatt suggest that they could have taken a stronger stance against him earlier in the race, to help limit his influence. They also point out that, in the 21st century, media and business figures also act as important political gatekeepers (just like the party elite). This can be troubling, because their incentives aren’t necessarily democratic. For instance, the authors point out how the media largely covered Trump because his exaggerated, controversial style made for good television. But this is the same style that made his authoritarian tendencies clear.

In a previous era, party leaders would have been able to block Trump’s nomination after Super Tuesday. But because of the changes to the nomination process in the last half-century, they couldn’t do it in 2016. They needed to act earlier, but either didn’t appreciate the threat Trump posed to democracy or quietly decided to make a “fateful alliance” with him.

Levitsky and Ziblatt accuse Republican gatekeepers of normalizing Trump by pretending not to see his authoritarian tendencies after he passed through the “invisible primary.” By returning to the four warning signs from their first chapter, they suggest that these warning signs were crystal clear. They hope this will help readers identify and call out such signs in the future, when party gatekeepers aren’t willing to.

According to Levitsky and Ziblatt, Trump’s disdain for established, fair electoral procedures showed that he doesn’t actually want the U.S. government to follow the will of the people—instead, he wanted it to hand him power, no matter the cost. This is destructive in the long term because it undermines the important democratic norm of public faith in free and fair elections. Given the events surrounding the 2020 election, readers will have to evaluate whether (and to what extent) Trump continues to threaten democracy in the U.S.

By denying that Obama and Clinton could legitimately participate in the U.S. political system, Trump undermined the key democratic norm of mutual toleration. He rejected the idea that elections are a legitimate contest for power between different groups, each of which has a right to rule if they are chosen by the public.

While the violence at Trump’s rallies was relatively small-scale, the authors suggest that it’s troubling because it suggests that Trump is willing to use political violence—potentially on a much larger scale—to get his way and overturn democracy.

Finally, Trump’s attacks on his critics signal that he is willing to use the legal system as a partisan weapon against his opponents. He rejected the critical democratic principle that the law should apply equally to everyone, regardless of political ideology or affiliation.

While there was little Republicans could do to stop Trump between Super Tuesday and the National Convention, they had the power to stop him in the general election by clearly articulating the risks he posed to U.S. democracy.  However, this required them to sacrifice their own short-term self-interest in order to preserve political stability in the long-term. Clearly, the authors claim, they weren’t invested enough in democracy to do so.

Levitsky and Ziblatt emphasize that it wouldn’t have taken the entire party leadership to delegitimize Trump and swing concerned Republican voters to Clinton. Like in Austria in 2016 and France in 2017, narrow margins would have been enough. The authors introduce the thesis that polarization is partially responsible for the Republicans’ unwillingness to put democracy before party. They elaborate this thesis at length in the book’s final chapters.