Many Americans believe that the United States is an exceptional nation. Whether they credit the Constitution, historical leaders, or a higher power, they think that the U.S. has a uniquely democratic political system that guarantees citizens more civil rights and liberties than any other country. But while Levitsky and Ziblatt agree that the United States’s democracy is historically strong and particularly long-lasting, they don’t think it’s exempt from the forces that have toppled other democracies around the world. In fact, they argue that Americans’ faith in U.S. democracy often blinds them to its failures and weaknesses. Rather than holding the United States apart as exceptional, Levitsky and Ziblatt closely compare it to other nations that have experienced democratic breakdown. They argue that, by learning about the distinct global and historical patterns in authoritarianism—and the strategies that have stopped it—everyday Americans and politicians alike will better equip themselves to defend democracy.
American democracy isn’t unique: like other democracies around the world, it’s also vulnerable to collapse. Many Americans credit the U.S. Constitution with creating an exceptionally long-lived democracy, which they believe will naturally overcome authoritarian attempts to undermine it. But actually, Levitsky and Ziblatt argue, the Constitution can’t protect democracy against authoritarians. When they want to destroy a nation’s democracy, authoritarians are usually happy to dismantle its constitution in the process. For instance, this is what Adolf Hitler did to Germany’s strong Weimar Constitution in the 1930s. The framers of the U.S. Constitution built checks and balances into the U.S. government in order to try and prevent this kind of takeover, but they knew that democracy can never magically defend itself. Citizens and politicians need to come to its defense. However, Americans who see U.S. democracy as infallible are unlikely to actively defend it. Levitsky and Ziblatt are careful to combat this myth by comparing the cracks in U.S. democracy with examples from throughout history and the world. In fact, by simply taking a look at U.S. history, readers will see that the U.S. hasn’t always been the stable democracy that many Americans imagine. For instance, in the early years of the U.S., the Federalists and Republicans both viewed the other as an existential threat and used anti-democratic strategies to fight for power. From the 1870s through the 1960s, Black people were essentially disenfranchised in the South, making Southern state governments deeply undemocratic. These examples show that undemocratic government has a long history in the U.S. But Levitsky and Ziblatt argue that it risks making a bombastic comeback on a national scale.
Levitsky and Ziblatt also think that examples from other times and places can help Americans understand and stop the threats to their democracy. This is why they compare Donald Trump’s rise to those of other authoritarians over the last century, like Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and the notorious Hitler and Mussolini. Authoritarians tend to use similar strategies to get and maintain power, so by understanding these patterns, Americans can better identify and stop anti-democratic politicians in the present and future. For instance, by learning how authoritarians like Juan Perón, Hugo Chávez, and Rafael Correa prosecuted and fined their political opponents in order to sideline them and keep power, Americans can understand why Donald Trump’s threats to prosecute Hillary Clinton and fine the media are so dangerous. Other countries’ stories can also help Americans understand where they stand on the road towards democratic decline. Levitsky and Ziblatt point to polarization during the 1960s and 1970s in Chile to show how partisanship escalates over time and eventually takes the guardrails off democracy. Meanwhile, outsider candidate Alberto Fujimori’s unexpected rise to power in Peru shows how “democratic breakdown doesn’t need a blueprint.” These examples can help Americans understand their nation’s own polarization and attraction to outsider candidates. In turn, they can help Americans predict and prevent authoritarianism. In fact, other countries aren’t the only source for illustrative examples of authoritarianism. So is the U.S.’s own past. In particular, segregation in the South is a classic example of how authoritarian parties rig election laws to ensure single-party rule. By learning about this history, Americans can start to identify how similar tactics—like Trump’s push for voter ID laws—serve to repress democracy in the present day.
Finally, other countries and times can also show Americans how to effectively fight authoritarianism. While there are “extremist demagogues” in every time and place, the authors explain, history shows how some countries have managed to keep them out of power. For instance, the authors note how Belgian and Finnish conservative parties stopped authoritarians in the 1930s through effective gatekeeping: they disavowed, expelled, and won voters back from far-right extremists rather than making “fateful alliances” with them. (Austria did the same as recently as 2016, when center-right parties supported the democratic Greens instead of anti-democratic far-right extremists.) These are models for how Republican gatekeepers can and should keep out extremists like Donald Trump. Similarly, in their concluding chapter, the authors cite Chile’s push for democracy in the 1980s and Germany’s transition to democracy after World War II as examples of how countries can overcome authoritarianism and polarization through political party reform. These examples show how the U.S. can restore its democracy in the future.
“History,” the authors argue at the end of their introduction, “doesn’t repeat itself. But it rhymes.” By bringing their expertise as scholars of global authoritarianism to bear on the United States, they don’t just highlight the patterns and warning signs that suggest U.S. democracy is on the road to decline: they also make a strong case for Americans to take their own history more seriously and learn about themselves by looking out at the world.
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Global and Historical Patterns Quotes in How Democracies Die
Is our democracy in danger? It is a question we never thought we’d be asking. We have been colleagues for fifteen years, thinking, writing, and teaching students about failures of democracy in other places and times—Europe’s dark 1930s, Latin America’s repressive 1970s. We have spent years researching new forms of authoritarianism emerging around the globe. For us, how and why democracies die has been an occupational obsession.
But now we find ourselves turning to our own country. Over the past two years, we have watched politicians say and do things that are unprecedented in the United States—but that we recognize as having been the precursors of democratic crisis in other places. We feel dread, as do so many other Americans, even as we try to reassure ourselves that things can’t really be that bad here. After all, even though we know democracies are always fragile, the one in which we live has somehow managed to defy gravity.
Blatant dictatorship—in the form of fascism, communism, or military rule—has disappeared across much of the world. Military coups and other violent seizures of power are rare. Most countries hold regular elections. Democracies still die, but by different means. Since the end of the Cold War, most democratic breakdowns have been caused not by generals and soldiers but by elected governments themselves. Like Chávez in Venezuela, elected leaders have subverted democratic institutions in Georgia, Hungary, Nicaragua, Peru, the Philippines, Poland, Russia, Sri Lanka, Turkey, and Ukraine. Democratic backsliding today begins at the ballot box.
Studying other democracies in crisis allows us to better understand the challenges facing our own democracy. For example, based on the historical experiences of other nations, we have developed a litmus test to help identify would-be autocrats before they come to power. We can learn from the mistakes that past democratic leaders have made in opening the door to would-be authoritarians—and, conversely, from the ways that other democracies have kept extremists out of power. A comparative approach also reveals how elected autocrats in different parts of the world employ remarkably similar strategies to subvert democratic institutions. As these patterns become visible, the steps toward breakdown grow less ambiguous—and easier to combat. Knowing how citizens in other democracies have successfully resisted elected autocrats, or why they tragically failed to do so, is essential to those seeking to defend American democracy today.
Many Americans are justifiably frightened by what is happening to our country. But protecting our democracy requires more than just fright or outrage. We must be humble and bold. We must learn from other countries to see the warning signs—and recognize the false alarms. We must be aware of the fateful missteps that have wrecked other democracies. And we must see how citizens have risen to meet the great democratic crises of the past, overcoming their own deep-seated divisions to avert breakdown. History doesn’t repeat itself. But it rhymes. The promise of history, and the hope of this book, is that we can find the rhymes before it is too late.
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.
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.
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.
Although some elected demagogues take office with a blueprint for autocracy, many, such as Fujimori, do not. Democratic breakdown doesn’t need a blueprint. Rather, as Peru’s experience suggests, it can be the result of a sequence of unanticipated events—an escalating tit-for-tat between a demagogic, norm-breaking leader and a threatened political establishment.
[…]
Many [demagogues] do eventually cross the line from words to action. This is because a demagogue’s initial rise to power tends to polarize society, creating a climate of panic, hostility, and mutual distrust. The new leader’s threatening words often have a boomerang effect. If the media feels threatened, it may abandon restraint and professional standards in a desperate effort to weaken the government. And the opposition may conclude that, for the good of the country, the government must be removed via extreme measures—impeachment, mass protest, even a coup.
By capturing the referees, buying off or enfeebling opponents, and rewriting the rules of the game, elected leaders can establish a decisive—and permanent—advantage over their opponents. Because these measures are carried out piecemeal and with the appearance of legality, the drift into authoritarianism doesn’t always set off alarm bells. Citizens are often slow to realize that their democracy is being dismantled—even as it happens before their eyes.
One of the great ironies of how democracies die is that the very defense of democracy is often used as a pretext for its subversion. Would-be autocrats often use economic crises, natural disasters, and especially security threats—wars, armed insurgencies, or terrorist attacks—to justify antidemocratic measures.
Throughout his life, Washington had learned that he “gained power from his readiness to give it up.” Thanks to his enormous prestige, this forbearance infused many of the American republic’s other nascent political institutions. As historian Gordon Wood put it, “If any single person was responsible for establishing the young Republic on a firm footing, it was Washington.”
In the 150-year span between 1866 and 2016, the Senate never once prevented the president from filling a Supreme Court seat. On seventy-four occasions during this period, presidents attempted to fill Court vacancies prior to the election of their successor. And on all seventy-four occasions—though not always on the first try—they were allowed to do so.
The norms sustaining our political system rested, to a considerable degree, on racial exclusion. The stability of the period between the end of Reconstruction and the 1980s was rooted in an original sin: the Compromise of 1877 and its aftermath, which permitted the de-democratization of the South and the consolidation of Jim Crow. Racial exclusion contributed directly to the partisan civility and cooperation that came to characterize twentieth-century American politics.
[…]
The process of racial inclusion that began after World War II and culminated in the 1964 Civil Rights Act and 1965 Voting Rights Act would, at long last, fully democratize the United States. But it would also polarize it, posing the greatest challenge to established forms of mutual toleration and forbearance since Reconstruction.
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 the early 1990s, Gingrich and his team distributed memos to Republican candidates instructing them to use certain negative words to describe Democrats, including pathetic, sick, bizarre, betray, antiflag, antifamily, and traitors. It was the beginning of a seismic shift in American politics.
[…]
Though few realized it at the time, Gingrich and his allies were on the cusp of a new wave of polarization rooted in growing public discontent, particularly among the Republican base. Gingrich didn’t create this polarization, but he was one of the first Republicans to exploit the shift in popular sentiment. And his leadership helped to establish “politics as warfare” as the GOP’s dominant strategy.
If, twenty-five years ago, someone had described to you a country in which candidates threatened to lock up their rivals, political opponents accused the government of stealing the election or establishing a dictatorship, and parties used their legislative majorities to impeach presidents and steal supreme court seats, you might have thought of Ecuador or Romania. You probably would not have thought of the United States.
Behind the unraveling of basic norms of mutual tolerance and forbearance lies a syndrome of intense partisan polarization. […] Over the last quarter century, Democrats and Republicans have become much more than just two competing parties, sorted into liberal and conservative camps. Their voters are now deeply divided by race, religious belief, geography, and even “way of life.”
Efforts to discourage voting are fundamentally antidemocratic, and they have a particularly deplorable history in the United States. Although contemporary voter-restriction efforts are nowhere near as far-reaching as those undertaken by southern Democrats in the late nineteenth century, they are nevertheless significant. Because strict voter ID laws disproportionately affect low-income minority voters, who are overwhelmingly Democratic, they skew elections in favor of the GOP.
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.
We fear that if Trump were to confront a war or terrorist attack, he would exploit this crisis fully—using it to attack political opponents and restrict freedoms Americans take for granted. In our view, this scenario represents the greatest danger facing American democracy today.
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.”
The reforms of the 1960s gave Americans a third chance to build a truly multiethnic democracy. It is imperative that we succeed, extraordinarily difficult though the task is. As our colleague Danielle Allen writes:
“The simple fact of the matter is that the world has never built a multiethnic democracy in which no particular ethnic group is in the majority and where political equality, social equality and economies that empower all have been achieved.”
This is America’s great challenge. We cannot retreat from it.
