How Democracies Die

Review

It’s difficult to approach this book, written in 2018, with the experiences of all the years which followed its publication. I found myself agitated throughout the reading. Many of Levitsky and Ziblatt’s points seem utterly naive and optimistic. There is a section of the book in which they lay out three potential scenarios for the future of the Trump Administration and the country. In one, their darkest, they describe a variety of “extreme” sounding ideas which they ultimately conclude to be unlikely. Each and every one has now occurred.

The book also looks at the emancipation of slaves, enfranchisement during reconstruction, disenfranchisement following its abortion, and the civil rights movement of the 60s. At each point, it describes some behaviors as forbearance and mutual toleration. My problem with this is that it is citing the disenfranchisement of a people as forbearance and toleration, and it is citing the civil rights act as an example of something that was not forbearance and which increased intolerance. Baffling. The writers are academics, and the reader can feel their palpable want to not annoy moderate Republicans (in a way which reeks of 2018). In doing so, they violate the point of their book. To describe the disenfranchisement which took place under Jim Crow and the end of reconstruction as forbearance is ridiculous and shameful.

There are a variety of other points in the book that induce eye rolls, frustrated sighs, and irritation. I might end up writing something longer about this book, though I don’t think whatever that is will be as useful as this book is now. And I think this book has next to no use today.

Notes

• p6 - For the sake of clarity, we are defining a democracy as a system of government with regular, free and fair elections, in which all adult citizens have the right to vote and possess basic civil liberties such as freedom of speech and association.
• p8 - The tragic paradox of the electoral route to authoritarianism is that democracy’s assassins use the very institutions of democracy—gradually, subtly, and even legally—to kill it.
• p55-56 - Party gatekeepers were shells of what they once were, for two main reasons. One was a dramatic increase in the availability of outside money, accelerated (though hardly caused) by the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United ruling. . . . The other major factor diminishing the power of traditional gatekeepers was the explosion of alternative media, particularly cable news and social medial.
• p67 - 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.
• p70 - In the United States, 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.
  • TB: I’m relatively unconvinced by this, but it is difficult to look back at the 2018 of it all without the 2026 lens. I think this is possible only if the Republicans had run an alternative candidate and Trump ran as an independent, splitting the conservative vote, which is not the situation pondered in this excerpt.
• p75 - The president killed congress. On April 5, 1992, Fujimori appeared on television and announced that he was dissolving congress and the constitution. Less than two years after his surprising election, the long-shot outsider had become a tyrant.
• p80 - Government that cannot remove independent judges may bypass them through court packing.
  • TB: several historical examples of what this looks like over the next few pages.
• p89 - Perhaps the most striking example of rewriting the rules to lock in an authoritarian advantage comes form the United States. The end of post–Civil War Reconstruction in the 1870sled to the emergence of authoritarian single-party regimes in every post-Confederate state. Single-party rule was not some benign historical accident; rather, it was a product of brazenly antidemocratic constitutional engineering.
  • TB: Yeah, no shit. I am nonplussed by this book’s discussion of court packing, reconstruction, and the civil rights movement.
• p89-90 - Enfranchisement empowered African Americans: More than two thousand southern freedmen won elective office in the 1870s, including fourteen congressmen and two U.S. senators. At one point, more than 40 percent of legislators in Louisiana’s and South Carolina’s lower houses were black.
  • TB: A quick check, I think Louisiana today is at 26%, South Carolina about 20%, just eyeballing.
• p93 - Wars and terrorist attacks product a “rally ‘round the flag” effect…
• p104 - When norms of mutual toleration are weak, democracy is hard to sustain. If we view our rivals as a dangerous threat, we have much to fear if they are elected.
  • At no point in this book do the authors contemplate what happens if the rivals are a dangerous threat, which is truly baffling.
• p107, continuing a line of thought on institutional forbearance - In politics, this often means eschewing dirty tricks of hardball tactics in the name of civility and fair play.
• p116 - But when societies grow so deeply divided that parties become wedded to incompatible worldviews, and especially when their members are so socially segregated that they rarely interact, stable partisan rivalries eventually give way to perceptions of mutual threat.
  • Again, very little consideration as to what to do when this is the case. They talk about antisystem groups, but not to much depth.
• p119, re: Roosevelt and court packing - Had it passed, however, it would have set a dangerous precedent. The Court would have become hyperpoliticized, its membership, size, and selection rules open to constraint manipulation . . . Had Roosevelt passed his judicial act, a key norm—that presidents should not undermine another coequal branch—would have been demolished.
  • TB: I suppose the problem I have with this is that it does not matter to people with no respect for norms. When a tyrant captures a party, what was normal makes no difference. This book is universally anti-court-packing, but does not contemplate a situation where it might be necessary to preserve democracy, which is baffling from a 2026 perspective. A week ago, the Supreme Court struck down the President’s ending of birthright citizenship, citing the 14th amendment. The 14th amendment states in plain text that “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside” and yet the decision was 6-3. That does not reflect a functional court.
• p124-125 - The disenfranchisement of African Americans preserved white supremacy and Democratic Party dominance in the South, which helped maintain the Democrats’ national viability. With racial equality off the agenda, southern Democrats’ fears subsided. Only then did partisan hostility begin to soften. Paradoxically, then, the norms that would later serve as a foundation for American democracy emerged out of a profoundly undemocratic arrangement: racial exclusion and the consolidation of single-party rule in the South.
  • TB: It is baffling to me that this is raised as a legitimate example of mutual toleration and forbearance, when in fact it is intolerance and intimidation. They are correct in identifying that it established norms: the norm of oppression. If slavery was the original sin, the abortion of reconstruction and the “forbearance” exercised here left the gaping wound of the Civil War open to rot and catch infection. And that toxin continues to poison our democracy. Because we exercised what they call “forbearance” and permitted free peoples to be oppressed in a supposedly free society.
• p143 - We must conclude with a troubling caveat, however. The norms sustaining our political system rested, to a considerable degree, on racial exclusion. 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. . . . Republicans reduced polarization and facilitated bipartisanship. But it did so at the great cost of keeping civil rights—and America’s full democratization—off the political agenda.
  • TB: Again, they are so close to the point. How can they acknowledge this as forbearance? They are undermining their entire book, saying that by preventing democracy, you can save it. It is a catastrophic argument.
• p144 - 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.
  • TB: quite difficult to read this as anything other than a “civil rights are good but…” I know this is not their intention, but it is very strange.
• p164, re: Obama’s work on the JCPOA (the Iran Deal) - The president’s actions were not out of constitutional bounds, but by acting unilaterally to achieve goals that had been blocked by Congress, President Obama violated the norm of forbearance.
  • TB: This book tries to be evenly distributive in its criticisms of political parties. Unfortunately, that makes the authors seem stupid, because they are simply not equally responsible for destroying norms. Pages earlier, they discuss the Republicans blocking a nomination to the Court and they fail to recognize that as a form of court packing. In their attempt to write a book that wouldn’t upset moderate Republicans, they have abandoned their point.
• p183 - Although President Trump has waged a war of words against the media and other critics, those words have not (yet) led to action. No journalists have been arrested, and no media outlets have altered their coverage due to pressure from the government.
  • TB: One of dozens of things that may have been true in 2018 which are no longer true. Every single thing they point out as bad, or something Trump has not yet done, has now happened.
• p204 - Writing this book has reminded us that American democracy is not as exceptional as we sometimes believe.
  • TB: NO SHIT.
• p206-209, TB: The authors over these pages describe three possible scenarios for the future of Trump. In one, which they call a “much darker future” and which they say, “these measures may appear extreme, but every one of them has been at least contemplated by the Trump administration.” Each one of the items in that scenario have already happened in Trump’s second term.
• p213 - In the wake of the 2016 election, many progressive opinion makers concluded that Democrats needed to “fight like Republicans.” If Republicans were going to break the rules, the argument went, Democrats had no choice but to respond in kind. . .
  • TB: they go on to say this is not a good idea.
• p217 - If Democrats do not work to restore norms of mutual toleration and forbearance, their next president will likely confront an opposition willing to use any means necessary to defeat them.
  • TB: Makes me want to tear my hair out when this book was written after already recognizing the unprecedented event of Republicans refusing to even hear the nomination of Obama’s SCOTUS nomination. With 2026 eyes, we also know that Biden’s term exclusively attempted to “restore norms” and, like the failure to follow through with Reconstruction, the poison stayed in the body.
• p218 - Public protest is a basic right and an important activity in any democracy, but its aim should be the defense of rights and institutions, rather than their disruption. . . . Anti-Trump forces should build a broad prodemocratic coalition. Contemporary coalition building is often a coming-together of like-minded groups: Progressive synagogues, mosques, Catholic parishes, and Presbyterian churches may form an interfaith coalition to combat poverty or racial intolerance, or Latino, faith-based, and civil liberties groups might form a coalition to defend immigrant rights. . . .
  • TB: They go on to talk about how the best coalitions are consisting of groups that have opposing views on many issues. Sure. I think this is a relatively naive and feckless segment of the book.
• p218-219, re: business interests - Business leaders may not be natural allies of Democratic activists, but they have good reasons to oppose an unstable and rule-breaking administration. And they can be powerful partners. Think of recent boycott movements aimed at state governments that refused to honor Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, continued to fly the Confederate flag, or violated gay or transgender rights. When major businesses join progressive boycotts, they often succeed.
  • TB: Surely the authors are not so naive to understand how ridiculous this is. Business interests did not support any of those causes out of the goodness of their hearts or because they were the right things to do. It was because they were either protecting income (in the case of not being seen to do business with so and so state), or because they wanted to grow their income by targeting popular movements. Absolutely none of these business interests have continued to be allies to the cause under Trump, because they were never allies, they were businesses. The idea that businesses do not have an interest in corrupt administrations is a severely dim understanding of capitalism, as evidenced by the galactic corruption of the current administration and the visible participation in it by corporations of all kind.
• p223 - Reducing polarization requires that the Republican Party be reformed, if not refounded outright.
  • TB: first time they’ve been up front about the fact that the Republicans are the accelerationist, antisystem groups that they’ve been discussing.