Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in How Democracies Die, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
American Tyranny
Authoritarianism vs. Democratic Norms
Extremism and Gatekeeping
Polarization and Inclusive Democracy
Global and Historical Patterns
Summary
Analysis
Alberto Fujimori never intended to rule Peru—in 1990, he only he ran for president to win name recognition for his independent senate campaign. Facing hyperinflation and a guerrilla insurgency, however, the public rebelled against the political establishment. They elected Fujimori, an inexperienced populist outsider, over the Nobel Prize-winning novelist Mario Vargas Llosa. When he took office, Fujimori faced an opposition-run congress and a skeptical media. He started publicly insulting his enemies, ruling through executive decrees, and pardoning thousands of prisoners. When the courts pushed back against Fujimori and congress tried to oust him, Fujimori disbanded congress and suspended the constitution instead.
The first several chapters of the book focused on how authoritarians take power. The next few chapters focus on how they attack democracy once they have it. Fujimori’s rise to power illustrates several key principles about how authoritarians rule. For instance, it shows how crisis amplifies threats to democracy: crisis gives authoritarians a chance to consolidate power and often makes citizens comfortable with such behavior. Fujimori also exemplifies how authoritarians can consolidate power and dismantle checks and balancesgradually, step-by-step over a long period of time, rather than suddenly, all at once.
Themes
Fujimori’s story shows that “democratic breakdown doesn’t need a blueprint.” Instead, it’s often the result of gradually escalating tensions between a leader and the establishment. These tensions often start with insults and accusations, which then escalate to desperate actions. For instance, Juan Perón and Hugo Chávez’s opposition tried to get them out of power by any means necessary, and they escalated tensions in response. Authoritarians also tend to dislike the endless compromises, criticism, and checks and balances that come with governing a democracy.
Levitsky and Ziblatt warn their readers against thinking of authoritarians as evil, malicious figures dead-set on crushing the people’s will and winning power for themselves. Instead, Fujimori’s case shows how ordinary politicians can become authoritarians under extraordinary circumstances. Fujimori, Perón, and Chávez were focused on fighting the establishment, not necessarily the popular will. But because they attempted to overcome polarization through escalation and dominance, rather than compromise and reconciliation, they ended up dismantling democracy in the process.
Themes
Elected demagogues tend to start attacking democratic institutions slowly, through a series of minor steps that seem legal or legitimate. Levitsky and Ziblatt compare this to how a soccer team might try to rig a game: they would win over the referees, incapacitate key players on the other team, and change the rules to their advantage.
Soccer is an apt metaphor for democracy because both games produce fair outcomes as long as both sides follow the rules. Both sides have an incentive to twist the rules for their own advantage, but there are severe punishments for doing so. Therefore, the game’s integrity already has to be weakened if players are to get away with cheating.
Themes
First, like the soccer team would try to win over the referees, authoritarians try to take control of agencies that are supposed to be “neutral arbiters,” like the courts, law enforcement, and regulators. This protects them from punishment and gives them a powerful weapon to use against their opponents. For instance, Viktor Orbán fired independent regulatory officials and hired allies instead. Alberto Fujimori’s advisor Vladimiro Montesinos bribed and blackmailed hundreds of opposition figures. Juan Perón, Viktor Orbán, the Polish Law and Justice Party, and Hugo Chávez all restructured their countries’ supreme courts to their favor.
Referees, or neutral legal and law enforcement agencies, are critical to a functioning democracy because they ensure that the law applies equally to all citizens and politicians. In turn, they provide a key democratic check on the ruling party’s power. When rulers manage to bias the referees, however, they make sure that they only check the other side’s power. While Fujimori captured the referees in an obviously unethical way, Orbán, Perón, and Chávez’s tactics are particularly sinister because they’re technically legal: each of these presidents actually had (or gave themselves) the legal authority to change the courts.
Themes
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Next, like the cheating soccer team, autocrats try to sideline their opponents. Bribes and favors are often the easiest way to win over the opposition. For instance, Vladimiro Montesinos paid off every major Peruvian TV channel, and in exchange, they let him plan the nightly news. He also bribed opposition politicians to support Fujimori’s illegal reelection effort and switch sides to give Fujimori a majority in congress.
By sidelining their political opponents, authoritarians eliminate their primary rivals for power and increase their chances of keeping power for themselves. By silencing the media, authoritarians cut off the public’s access to information about their abuses of power. Fujimori and Montesinos’s bribery campaign was a particularly egregious and successful example of this. Fujimori won loyalty from the media and opposition by making it as easy as possible for them to accept authoritarianism and as difficult as possible for them to defend democracy.
Themes
When bribes and favors fail, autocrats look to incapacitate their opponents, whether in politics, the media, business, or popular culture. They can’t kill opponents anymore, but they often can attack them through the law. Juan Perón, Hugo Chávez, and the Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamed all got opposition leaders arrested on dubious charges. Rafael Correa, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Vladimir Putin, and Chávez all crushed opposition media through fines and lawsuits, leaving them open for government takeover. Putin and Erdoğan investigated, audited, and fined wealthy businessmen who support the opposition. Perón got the iconic writer Jorge Luis Borges fired and blacklisted after he criticized the government, while Chávez funded cultural figures like the conductor Gustavo Dudamel to prevent them from speaking out against the regime. By silencing prominent opposition figures, autocrats convince everyone in the opposition to give up.
Just like they contrast coups d’état with gradual democratic backsliding, Levitsky and Ziblatt contrast traditional, bombastic anti-democratic tactics with the more subtle, ambiguous tactics that authoritarians use today. Political assassinations and Montesinos’s bribery campaign exemplify black-and-white old-school authoritarianism. Meanwhile, the other tactics that Levitsky and Ziblatt mention here fall into the gray area of contemporary democratic backsliding. In all of them, authoritarian leaders technically act within the law and publicly claim to be defending democracy, when they’re really manipulating the law to attack democracy.
Themes
Finally, like the cheating soccer team, authoritarians try to rewrite the rules for their own benefit. They change procedures and institutions to protect their power, while claiming to just be improving democracy. For instance, Malaysia’s ruling UMNO party secured the vast majority of parliamentary seats through gerrymandering, and Viktor Orbán changed election laws to ensure that all political advertising ran on his government’s broadcast station. In fact, Levitsky and Ziblatt argue that the worst example of such antidemocratic election laws is the Southern U.S. after the Civil War. Every Southern state passed discriminatory laws to prevent Black people from voting and lock in single-party white supremacist rule.
In a democracy, justice is supposed to be blind: the law is supposed to be neutral, impartial, and objective. By manipulating laws to their own benefit, authoritarians violate this fundamental democratic principle. In short, they change the law so that they can call their wrongdoing legal. Next, by pointing out how Southern state governments were fundamentally antidemocratic for much of American history, Levitsky and Ziblatt also challenge the common wisdom that the U.S. is and always has been an exemplary democracy. In fact, it’s possible to understand contemporary challenges to the rule of law in the U.S.—like partisan voting restrictions—by looking at U.S. history as well as other countries like Malaysia and Hungary.
Themes
Ironically, while they dismantle democracy bit by bit, authoritarians frequently claim to be defending it—especially during crises. For instance, after an unexplained bombing in 1972, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos declared that martial law was necessary to protect democracy. (He went on to rule as a dictator for fourteen years.)
By using pro-democracy rhetoric to justify anti-democratic behavior, authoritarians make their tactics harder to identify and give their supporters plausible deniability. They suggest that democracy’s survival depends on them winning, when it really depends on their willingness to give up power.
Themes
Crises generally help governments concentrate and abuse power by encouraging citizens to “rally ‘round the flag.” This happened in the U.S. after 9/11, when President George W. Bush became incredibly popular and started restricting civil liberties. In crises, the public tends to tolerate authoritarian policies and constitutions tend to give executives special emergency powers. Therefore, demagogues seek out crises in order to rig the government in their favor. Fujimori justified his 1992 coup d’état by pointing to the guerrilla insurgency, and Marcos likely orchestrated the very bombing that he used to justify imposing martial law.
Bush’s policy changes after 9/11 were not as extreme or authoritarian as Ferdinand Marcos’s power grab after the 1972 Manila bombing. Most importantly, he didn’t manufacture the crisis for his own benefit. However, Bush’s policies still prove Levitsky and Ziblatt’s basic principle: leaders can exploit the “rally ‘round the flag” effect in order to consolidate power and attack democracy. This is as true in the U.S. as anywhere else, even if Americans are reluctant to admit it. Despite its pro-democracy rhetoric, the U.S. public is absolutely open to authoritarian policies that limit their civil rights and liberties.
Themes
Most famously, when the Reichstag (German parliament building) burned down in 1933, Adolf Hitler used his emergency powers to eliminate the Nazis’ opposition and rule Germany by decree for more than a decade. Similarly, when Vladimir Putin became Russia’s prime minister in 1999, he used a series of alleged terrorist attacks on Moscow to justify invading the region of Chechnya, consolidating power, and attacking the opposition. In fact, many historians believe that the Nazis started the Reichstag fire and Putin’s government planned the attacks on Moscow. Similarly, in Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan used ISIS terror attacks and a 2016 coup attempt to justify calling emergency elections and cracking down on thousands of officials, journalists, and judges.
Authoritarians’ behavior during crises resembles their rhetoric about democracy. They claim that democracy is under threat and the only way to save it is by handing them power, when in reality, they’ve created the threat to democracy. Similarly, Hitler, Putin, and Erdoğan all manufactured or magnified crises, then argued that overcoming these crises required handing them power. In general, these crises were the key point at which their regimes turned from democratic to authoritarian. Levitsky and Ziblatt’s message is clear: Americans should be extremely wary about Donald Trump’s behavior during such a crisis.
Themes
