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
When he entered office, much like Chávez, Fujimori, or Erdoğan, Donald Trump started attacking his opponents (like the media, liberal judges, and major cities). Most of his media coverage was negative, and he soon faced a major investigation by Robert Mueller and discussions of impeachment. He used all three of the authoritarian strategies the authors discussed in Chapter Four: “capturing the referees, sidelining key players, and rewriting the rules.”
Levitsky and Ziblatt have shown that, before Trump’s presidency, anti-democratic politics was primarily confined to Congress in the U.S. (But there were some exceptions, like Bush’s authoritarian measures after 9/11 and Obama’s expanded use of executive orders.) But Trump brought congressional Republicans’ strategies into the Oval Office. He was a uniquely dangerous figure, but his presidency was also the culmination of a long process of expanding partisanship and weakening democratic norms. In other words, the U.S. faced both an acute crisis (Trump) and a chronic one (polarization). Each crisis reinforced the other.
Themes
First, Trump tried to capture the referees. He asked the leaders of major government agencies, like FBI director James Comey, for loyalty and personal favors. Then he fired prominent officials, including Comey, who didn’t follow his demands. He threatened to fire Mueller, who was investigating him, and attacked judges whose rulings he disliked. He pardoned the anti-immigrant sheriff Joe Arpaio for political reasons and even considered pardoning himself. This was a blatant attack on the independence of the judiciary. Trump even attacked the Office of Government Ethics when it criticized his business conflicts of interest. Fortunately, his authoritarian attempts to politicize independent agencies mostly failed.
Capturing the referees allows authoritarians to avoid accountability and lets them use the law as a partisan weapon against their opponents. According to Levitsky and Ziblatt, Trump clearly wanted to do this. In asking Comey for loyalty, he hoped to turn the FBI into a partisan agency that would do his bidding. In threatening to fire Robert Mueller, he attempted to avoid legal scrutiny for his actions. In pardoning Joe Arpaio and discussing pardoning himself, he signaled that he thought violating the law was acceptable if it benefited him. Altogether, he consistently viewed agencies responsible for maintaining the rule of law as illegitimate and tried to circumvent them.
Themes
Second, Trump tried to sideline key political players. He called major media outlets “fake news” and an “enemy of the people” (like Stalin and Mao did), and he threatened to change the law so that he could sue journalists (like Rafael Correa). He threatened to attack media outlets he disliked, like the Washington Post and CNN, with antitrust suits. He tried to defund “sanctuary cities” through an executive order, much like Hugo Chávez tried to defund opposition-run cities in Venezuela. But the courts stopped his executive order on sanctuary cities, and his attacks on journalists haven’t led to arrests or pressured them to change their coverage.
By discrediting their critics and sidelining their rivals for power, authoritarians improve their odds of holding onto power in situations where a functioning democratic system would take it away from them. By calling the media “fake news” and the “enemy of the people,” Trump encouraged his supporters to reject credible criticism of his policies and abuses of power. By threatening legal action against the media, he tried to prevent it from making such credible criticisms in the first place. And in attacking “sanctuary cities,” he tried to disempower other officials who disagreed with his policies and took legal steps to limit their influence. In all these cases, rather than treating his critics and opposition as legitimate participants in a fair system, he tried to change the system so they couldn’t limit his power.
Themes
Third and finally, Trump tried “to tilt the playing field to his advantage.” He proposed eliminating the filibuster to increase Republican power in the Senate. But most disturbingly, he created the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity to make voting harder for low-income minority and immigrant Americans (who overwhelmingly support Democrats). Republicans in many states had already targeted these voters with strict voter ID laws, based on the disproven claims of voter fraud that Trump took up to argue that he won the popular vote in 2016. Trump’s Commission pushed for the states to pass voter ID laws and purge voter rolls (which usually eliminates more legitimate voters than illegitimate ones). Fortunately, as of 2017, the states mostly rejected the Commission’s demands.
Authoritarians “tilt the playing field to [their] advantage” so that they can gain more power than democratic rules would otherwise give them and maintain power when democratic rules would take it away from them. The authors present Trump’s push for voting restrictions as a clear example of this: he wants Republican voters to count more than Democratic voters. Crucially, this kind of restriction is largely based on race, which means it has important precedents in the U.S. For almost a century, Jim Crow laws essentially disenfranchised Black voters in the South. Levitsky and Ziblatt argue that Trump wants to return to the same racially exclusionary system of government—and extend it around the country.
Themes
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While “Trump followed the electoral authoritarian script during his first year,” his attempts to consolidate power in that year were mostly unsuccessful. However, the authors compare Trump’s first year to those of nine other authoritarians and point out that most didn’t actually dismantle democracy’s guardrails in their first year.
Levitsky and Ziblatt use historical examples from other nations to warn their readers that, even though Trump hadn’t successfully crushed American democracy in his first year in office, he continued to pose a grave threat to it. Readers considering Levitsky and Ziblatt’s argument after Trump’s presidency can decide for themselves to what extent Trump ultimately tore down democracy’s guardrails.
Themes
The Republican Party’s response to Trump will be key to the survival of American democracy. Elected authoritarians’ parties can check or enable their worst instincts. Republicans can remain loyal to Trump, whether by actively supporting him, quietly voting with him, or criticizing but refusing to vote against him. They can also choose containment—or support some of his policy agenda without accepting his antidemocratic abuses of power. Or finally, they could also try to remove him from office—but they are likely to find this too costly. In his first year, Republicans were often loyal to Trump, but also chose containment when he fired James Comey and proposed firing Robert Mueller.
While authoritarians generally try to circumvent the political establishment, it’s no secret that they’re more effective when they have the establishment’s support. Therefore, even though Republican Party leaders failed as gatekeepers during the 2016 election, during Trump’s term, they still had the chance to rescue democracy by prioritizing it above partisanship. Levitsky and Ziblatt see that, as democratic norms faltered, so did the Republican Party’s willingness to defend them against Trump. However, the exceptions to this (like Republican opposition to Comey’s firing) still made a significant impact on Trump’s credibility.
Themes
Public support can also make or break Trump’s attempts to destroy democracy. Opponents and the media tend to think twice before criticizing popular presidents. Fujimori, Chávez, and Erdoğan all used their popularity to their advantage. Similarly, in conservative West Virginia, even elected Democrats praise and vote with Trump. This shows that public support makes Trump more dangerous.
Like establishment support, public support can increase or decrease a leader’s power. It determines whether their policies face political resistance and affects other politicians’ willingness to work with them. Therefore, Levitsky and Ziblatt suggest, public mobilization and protest were important ways for Americans to defend democracy during Trump’s term.
Themes
Crisis is the last key factor that decides whether Trump’s attacks on democracy will be successful. In national security crises, citizens and judges often support authoritarian measures. Fujimori, Putin, and Erdoğan all used crises to their advantage. Pro-democracy leaders like Abraham Lincoln and George W. Bush have, too, but only through forbearance—which Trump seems uninterested in exercising. Levitsky and Ziblatt argue that Trump exploiting a terrorist attack or war to consolidate power is “the greatest danger facing American democracy today.”
Crises often require unusually rapid, decisive responses, which means that extraordinary executive power is sometimes needed to address them. However, Levitsky and Ziblatt draw a clear line between leaders who focus on solving crises (like Lincoln and Bush) and those who focus on exploiting them (like Fujimori, Putin, Erdoğan, and likely Trump). The authors see Trump’s behavior in such a crisis as “the greatest danger facing American democracy” because he could use it to circumvent all the checks, balances, and guardrails that ordinarily limit his power.
Themes
Trump’s behavior will likely erode democratic norms and institutions in the long run, even if it doesn’t destroy them. He has turned unsavory behaviors like “lying, cheating, and bullying” into acceptable political tactics in the U.S. But breaking norms isn’t always bad. For instance, Jimmy Carter didn’t hurt anyone by walking to his inauguration instead of riding in his limousine. Some norm-breaking can improve democracy: William Henry Harrison was the first presidential candidate to meet voters on the campaign trail in 1840, for example, and Theodore Roosevelt was the first to invite a Black political leader to the White House when he dined with Booker T. Washington in 1901.
Democratic norms are self-reinforcing: when politicians follow them, they strengthen them, and when they break them, they weaken them. This explains why Trump’s actions are likely to have ripple effects and exacerbate polarization in the long term. Levitsky and Ziblatt also distinguish between useful and dangerous presidential norm-breaking. Their litmus test for whether norm-breaking is useful is whether it promotes or harms democracy. Carter and Harrison’s decisions brought them closer to voters, while Roosevelt’s was an important step towards racial inclusion. But Trump’s “lying, cheating, and bullying” undermined key norms that make democracy function. He didn’t just attack toleration and forbearance, but also more basic norms like civility, honesty, and respect for the truth.
Themes
But Trump’s norm-breaking is constant and clearly antidemocratic. In particular, he abandoned key unwritten norms against nepotism (by appointing family members to White House jobs) and conflicts of interest (by continuing to control his company while acting as President). He violated the essential norm that politicians respect the integrity of American elections, and he convinced approximately half of Republican voters that the U.S. electoral system is rigged against them. He broke norms of civility by attacking Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
Trump’s nepotism and conflicts of interest suggested that he put his own personal interests above the national interest. Although legal, this clearly violated the spirit of the law. By undermining public faith in American elections, he set the groundwork for stealing elections in the future and convinced many of his supporters to think that any election he loses is automatically illegitimate. Of course, this could be used to justify extreme or even violent responses.
Themes
Trump has broken one more fundamental political norm: telling the truth. While other politicians skirt around difficult questions, Trump simply lies—even about obvious questions like the number of bills he’s signed. This erodes the public’s trust in the government’s credibility, which is essential to a functioning democracy. Where other presidents have respected the media’s important role in democracy, Trump has attacked it in an unprecedented way. His personal attacks on reporters resemble Hugo Chávez, Nicolás Maduro, and Rafael Correa’s public rhetoric. He has even rewarded news outlets whose coverage of him is favorable, while barring more skeptical reporters from attending press events.
Ordinary politicians skirt the truth instead of lying because they know that being caught in a lie will threaten their credibility with voters. But Trump is powerful and brazen enough to lie without losing substantial support. His opponents lose faith in the government, while his supporters lose faith in the truths that disagree with him. The American public becomes divided not just by party, race, and culture, but also by their different senses of reality. Again, by comparing Trump to Chávez, Mauro, and Correa, Levitsky and Ziblatt underline how grave the U.S.’s democratic crisis really is. Rebuilding public trust in government and the media is a monumental task, especially when the government remains as polarized as the electorate.
Themes
Social norms tend to shift when they are repeatedly broken. Trump’s political deviance (or violation of democratic norms) is therefore accelerating political deviance throughout the rest of U.S. society. Americans are getting used to his lying, cheating, and attacks—and increasingly seeing such behavior as acceptable in U.S. politics. Survey evidence suggests that Republicans increasingly support fining the media. In a recruiting video, the powerful National Rifle Association explicitly threatened to shoot journalists. “Once considered unthinkable,” such behavior is now increasingly normal.
The early years of Trump’s presidency fulfilled the same pattern as “fateful alliances” between extremists and establishment parties in other democracies throughout the world. Namely, while the establishment expected the extremist to become moderate, the establishment became extreme instead. The authors argue that Trump’s antidemocratic behavior is accelerating the Republicans’ transformation into an antidemocratic party. Previously “unthinkable” authoritarian policies, like fining the media, are now on the table. This is a real-time example of democratic backsliding—or the steady shift from democracy to authoritarianism.
Themes
