The best way to stop authoritarian leaders, Levitsky and Ziblatt argue, is by never giving them power in the first place. In many nations throughout history, this has been much easier said than done, because authoritarians have gained power through undemocratic means like coups d’état and patronage. But in contemporary democracies like the U.S., politicians and voters have the chance to identify and stop would-be demagogues. In particular, Levitsky and Ziblatt argue, this responsibility falls on political parties, which are “democracy’s gatekeepers.” Throughout history, these gatekeepers have frequently opened the door to demagogues in the hopes of winning greater public support. But instead of winning that support, they have usually legitimized the demagogues. Instead, Levitsky and Ziblatt argue, party gatekeepers should identify anti-democratic politicians and movements as early as possible, then stamp them out by expelling, marginalizing, and uniting against them.
Levitsky and Ziblatt argue that establishment political parties generally have the power to give or deny extremists power. This tends to follow an established pattern: extremist outsiders, usually on the right, build passionate followings and start to challenge establishment parties’ power. Hoping to hold onto their fragile power, those establishment parties then form “fateful alliances” with the outsiders. There are too many examples of this pattern to count, ranging from Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini’s notorious rises to power in the early 20th century to Vladimir Putin, Hugo Chávez, Alberto Fujimori, and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s strategies in more recent decades. To take just one example, Hugo Chávez was a disgraced, imprisoned revolutionary in 1992. But then, Venezuela’s former president, Rafael Caldera, decided that embracing Chávez might give him another shot at the presidency. Caldera won with Chávez’s support, then freed Chávez from prison. This gave Chávez legitimacy in Venezuelan politics. Eventually, it enabled him to win his own presidential bid and permanently take power away from establishment politicians like Caldera. This shows what actually happens when establishment parties embrace outsiders in the hopes of boosting their own electoral chances. By embracing Chávez, Caldera temporarily boosted his own popularity, but undermined Venezuelan democracy in the long term. In general, Levitsky and Ziblatt conclude, “fateful alliances” between establishment politicians and populist outsiders tend to backfire—rather than boosting the establishment, they lend the outsider candidates the legitimacy they need to win power.
Instead of making such ill-fated alliances, Levitsky and Ziblatt argue, establishment party leaders should do everything in their power to keep unfit, anti-democratic candidates out of office. First, elites have to identify extremists—which is why Levitsky and Ziblatt list the “four behavioral warning signs” of authoritarianism: rejecting the rules of democracy, denying the legitimacy of opponents, encouraging violence, and restricting critics’ civil liberties. Candidates who meet one or more of these criteria are likely to undermine democracy, but by identifying such candidates as early as possible, parties make it easier to stop them. Next, Levitsky and Ziblatt argue that party elites have to “isolate and defeat” prospective authoritarians. This means refusing to let extremists run for office on their party ticket and expelling them from the party when necessary. Party elites also have to expel extremist grassroots movements when necessary to maintain and signal their commitment to democracy. Where “fateful alliances” normalize and popularize extremists, the “isolate and defeat” strategy ensures they remain marginal and irrelevant. Most importantly, when extremists do make it to the general election, party elites have to work to defeat them—even if it means joining forces with the opposition. This isn’t just in the national interest—it’s also in the party’s self-interest, because preserving the rules of democracy is the best way for them to have a better chance at winning elections in the future.
Successful gatekeeping would have kept Donald Trump out of the White House. There’s plenty of precedent for it in the U.S. In fact, numerous right-wing demagogues have been extremely popular in U.S. history, ranging from well-known celebrities like Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh to successful state politicians like Huey Long and George Wallace. Many of them had around the same level of national support as Donald Trump—roughly 40 percent—but never stood a chance of winning the presidency because neither major party would back them. But key differences in the 2016 election prevented gatekeepers from stopping Trump. First, the Republican establishment didn’t have enough control over the primary-based nomination process to overrule Trump’s popularity. Second, once it became clear that Trump would win the Republican nomination, virtually no Republicans broke with him and endorsed Hillary Clinton in order to save democracy. Had they done so, they would have preserved both American democracy and their own party’s integrity.
But ultimately, Levitsky and Ziblatt conclude, the Republican Party failed to contain Donald Trump in 2016, then made the fatal error of embracing him instead. As the GOP increasingly becomes Trump’s party, establishment Republicans are increasingly paying the price for their errors. The authors hope that, at the very least, this Republican failure can help gatekeepers identify and stop dangerous politicians like Trump in the future.
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Extremism and Gatekeeping Quotes in How Democracies Die
A cast of political outsiders, including Adolf Hitler, Getúlio Vargas in Brazil, Alberto Fujimori in Peru, and Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, came to power on the same path: from the inside, via elections or alliances with powerful political figures. In each instance, elites believed the invitation to power would contain the outsider, leading to a restoration of control by mainstream politicians. But their plans backfired. A lethal mix of ambition, fear, and miscalculation conspired to lead them to the same fateful mistake: willingly handing over the keys of power to an autocrat-in-the-making.
Potential demagogues exist in all democracies, and occasionally, one or more of them strike a public chord. But in some democracies, political leaders heed the warning signs and take steps to ensure that authoritarians remain on the fringes, far from the centers of power. When faced with the rise of extremists or demagogues, they make a concerted effort to isolate and defeat them. Although mass responses to extremist appeals matter, what matters more is whether political elites, and especially parties, serve as filters. Put simply, political parties are democracy’s gatekeepers.
Building on Linz’s work, we have developed a set of four behavioral warning signs that can help us know an authoritarian when we see one. We should worry when a politician 1) rejects, in words or action, the democratic rules of the game, 2) denies the legitimacy of opponents, 3) tolerates or encourages violence, or 4) indicates a willingness to curtail the civil liberties of opponents, including the media. Table 1 shows how to assess politicians in terms of these four factors.
In short, Americans have long had an authoritarian streak. It was not unusual for figures such as Coughlin, Long, McCarthy, and Wallace to gain the support of a sizable minority—30 or even 40 percent—of the country. We often tell ourselves that America’s national political culture in some way immunizes us from such appeals, but this requires reading history with rose-colored glasses. The real protection against would-be authoritarians has not been Americans’ firm commitment to democracy but, rather, the gatekeepers—our political parties.
Because they select our presidential candidates, parties have the ability—and, we would add, the responsibility—to keep dangerous figures out of the White House. They must, therefore, strike a balance between two roles: a democratic role, in which they choose the candidates that best represent the party’s voters; and what political scientist James Ceaser calls a “filtration” role, in which they screen out those who pose a threat to democracy or are otherwise unfit to hold office.
These dual imperatives—choosing a popular candidate and keeping out demagogues—may, at times, conflict with each other. […] There is no escape from this tension. There are always trade-offs.
Collective abdication—the transfer of authority to a leader who threatens democracy—usually flows from one of two sources. The first is the misguided belief that an authoritarian can be controlled or tamed. The second is what sociologist Ivan Ermakoff calls “ideological collusion,” in which the authoritarian’s agenda overlaps sufficiently with that of mainstream politicians that abdication is desirable, or at least preferable to the alternatives. But when faced with a would-be authoritarian, establishment politicians must unambiguously reject him or her and do everything possible to defend democratic institutions—even if that means temporarily joining forces with bitter rivals.
In short, most Republican leaders ended up holding the party line. If they had broken decisively with Trump, telling Americans loudly and clearly that he posed a threat to our country’s cherished institutions, and if, on those grounds, they had endorsed Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump might never have ascended to the presidency. […] We have no way of knowing how Republican voters would have split. Some, perhaps even most, of the base might still have voted for Trump. But enough would have been swayed by the image of both parties uniting to ensure Trump’s defeat.
What happened, tragically, was very different. Despite their hemming and hawing, most Republican leaders closed ranks behind Trump, creating the image of a unified party. That, in turn, normalized the election. Rather than a moment of crisis, the election became a standard two-party race, with Republicans backing the Republican candidate and Democrats backing the Democratic candidate.
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.
Reducing polarization requires that the Republican Party be reformed, if not refounded outright. First of all, the GOP must rebuild its own establishment. This means regaining leadership control in four key areas: finance, grassroots organization, messaging, and candidate selection. Only if the party leadership can free itself from the clutches of outside donors and right-wing media can it go about transforming itself. This entails major changes: Republicans must marginalize extremist elements; they must build a more diverse electoral constituency, such that the party no longer depends so heavily on its shrinking white Christian base; and they must find ways to win elections without appealing to white nationalism, or what Republican Arizona senator Jeff Flake calls the “sugar high of populism, nativism, and demagoguery.”
