How Democracies Die Characters

Salvador Allende was the democratically-elected socialist president of Chile from 1970 until his death during a military coup d’état in 1973. He took power during a time of escalating polarization, and his attempts to promote talks between the left and right to preserve democracy ultimately failed.

Abdalá Bucaram was the controversial president of Ecuador from 1996 to 1997, when the Ecuadorian congress impeached him on the dubious grounds of mental incapacity. Levitsky and Ziblatt cite Bucaram and Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo’s impeachment trials as egregious examples of constitutional hardball.

James Comey was the director of the FBI from 2013 until 2017. Donald Trump demanded personal loyalty from Comey as part of his attempt to “capture the referees.” When Comey refused, Trump fired him.

Rafael Correa was the president of Ecuador from 2007 to 2017. He took many typically authoritarian actions in office, ranging from attacking opposition leaders to suing unfavorable media outlets.

Merrick Garland is a federal judge who Barack Obama nominated for the U.S. Supreme Court in 2016. However, in an unprecedented act of constitutional hardball, the Republican-led Senate blocked Garland’s nomination. After Donald Trump’s election, the Senate instead confirmed a more conservative justice, Neil Gorsuch.

Levitsky and Ziblatt are Harvard political scientists and the authors of How Democracies Die. They wrote this book to apply the lessons they’ve learned from studying global authoritarianism to Donald Trump’s presidency in the United States.

Lincoln was the President of the United States during the Civil War, from 1861 to 1865. In response to the crisis, he oversaw an expansion of executive power, but Levitsky and Ziblatt argue that he generally used forbearance when exercising this power.

Huey Long was the radical, authoritarian governor of Louisiana (and later U.S. Senator) in the 1920s and 1930s. While he aspired to the presidency, Levitsky and Ziblatt argue that he would not have succeeded because party gatekeepers would have deemed him too extreme.

Fernando Lugo was the outsider president of Paraguay from 2008 until 2012, when the Paraguayan congress hastily impeached him for “poor performance of duties.” Levitsky and Ziblatt use his impeachment, like that of Ecuadorian president Abdalá Bucaram, as an example of constitutional hardball.

Nicolás Maduro is Hugo Chávez’s successor and, as of 2021, the current president of Venezuela. He completed Venezuela’s transition to authoritarian one-party rule by manipulating the supreme court and replacing the congress with a new body of loyalists.

Ferdinand Marcos was the famously corrupt, authoritarian president of the Philippines from 1965 to 1986. In 1972, after an unexplained bombing in Manila, he declared marital law and exploited the crisis to justify changing the national constitution and persecuting his opposition.

Vladimiro Montesinos was Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori’s close advisor. He blackmailed hundreds of Peruvian politicians and paid off every television network in exchange for favorable coverage.

Juan Perón was the president of Argentina from 1946 to 1955, and then again from 1973 to 1974. Like many other authoritarians, he persecuted political opponents and weaponized the judiciary in order to keep his hold on power.

Philip Roth is the American novelist who wrote The Plot Against America, a novel set in an alternative timeline where Nazi sympathizer Charles Lindbergh won the U.S. presidency in 1940.

George Wallace was the segregationist governor of Alabama who served four terms between 1963 and 1987. He repeatedly ran for president, and he was about as popular as Donald Trump in 2016. But he was unsuccessful because Democratic Party gatekeepers considered him too extreme and racist for national office.