How Democracies Die

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

“Comprehensive, enlightening, and terrifyingly timely.”
—New York Times Book Review

“Cool and persuasive... How Democracies Die comes at exactly the right moment.”
—The Washington Post

Donald Trump’s presidency has raised a question that many of us never thought we’d be asking: Is our democracy in danger? Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt have spent more than twenty years studying the breakdown of democracies in Europe and Latin America, and they believe the answer is yes. Democracy no longer ends with a bang—in a revolution or military coup—but with a whimper: the slow, steady weakening of critical institutions, such as the judiciary and the press, and the gradual erosion of long-standing political norms. The good news is that there are several exit ramps on the road to authoritarianism. The bad news is that, by electing Trump, we have already passed the first one.

Drawing on decades of research and a wide range of historical and global examples, from 1930s Europe to contemporary Hungary, Turkey, and Venezuela, to the American South during Jim Crow, Levitsky and Ziblatt show how democracies die—and how ours can be saved.

• The Broken Ladder: How Inequality Affects the Way We Think, Live, and Die
• The People vs. Democracy: Why Our Freedom Is in Danger and How to Save It
• The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America
• The Broken Ladder: How Inequality Affects the Way We Think, Live, and Die
• On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century
• Can Democracy Survive Global Capitalism?
• What Is Populism?
• Can It Happen Here?: Authoritarianism in America
• How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them
• Fascism: A Warning