Levitsky and Ziblatt compare democratic norms to guardrails in order to illustrate how they protect political systems against anti-democratic elements. Just as guardrails protect people from falling off a balcony or cars from veering off a freeway, democratic norms can protect a democracy in its moment of greatest need. But most of the time, they just sit passively in the background, so it’s easy to underestimate their importance.
Specifically, norms like mutual toleration and institutional forbearance protect democracies by helping them course-correct when authoritarian leaders take power. In short, when the majority of lawmakers believe in toleration and forbearance, they isolate and punish others who break from those norms. For instance, during three key moments when powerful politicians challenged democratic norms in the 20th century U.S.—Franklin D. Roosevelt’s attempts to expand executive power, Joseph McCarthy’s persecution of suspected communists, and Richard Nixon’s abuses of presidential power to sabotage his electoral opponents—Congress united to stop and sanction the offenders. But these guardrails also explain why Donald Trump’s presidency is so dangerous: the guardrails are no longer functioning like they’re supposed to. Therefore, according to the authors, Trump genuinely risks pushing American democracy over the edge to authoritarianism.
Democracy’s Guardrails Quotes in How Democracies Die
The traditions underpinning America’s democratic institutions are unraveling, opening up a disconcerting gap between how our political system works and long-standing expectations about how it ought to work. As our soft guardrails have weakened, we have grown increasingly vulnerable to antidemocratic leaders.
Donald Trump, a serial norm breaker, is widely (and correctly) criticized for assaulting America’s democratic norms. But the problem did not begin with Trump. The process of norm erosion started decades ago—long before Trump descended an escalator to announce his presidential candidacy.
In many ways, President Trump followed the electoral authoritarian script during his first year. He made efforts to capture the referees, sideline the key players who might halt him, and tilt the playing field. But the president has talked more than he has acted, and his most notorious threats have not been realized. […] President Trump repeatedly scraped up against the guardrails, like a reckless driver, but he did not break through them. Despite clear causes for concern, little actual backsliding occurred in 2017. We did not cross the line into authoritarianism.
It is still early, however. The backsliding of democracy is often gradual, its effects unfolding slowly over time. Comparing Trump’s first year in office to those of other would-be authoritarians, the picture is mixed.
Norms are the soft guardrails of democracy; as they break down, the zone of acceptable political behavior expands, giving rise to discourse and action that could imperil democracy. Behavior that was once considered unthinkable in American politics is becoming thinkable. Even if Donald Trump does not break the hard guardrails of our constitutional democracy, he has increased the likelihood that a future president will.
The third, and in our view, most likely, post-Trump future is one marked by polarization, more departures from unwritten political conventions, and increasing institutional warfare—in other words, democracy without solid guardrails.
Democracy’s Guardrails Symbol Timeline in How Democracies Die
