How Democracies Die

In How Democracies Die, Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt dismantle the illusion that modern democracies are indestructible. They show that democracies rarely fall in dramatic fashion anymore—there are no tanks on the streets, no coups broadcast on television. Instead, they erode slowly from within, under the leadership of elected officials who use legal mechanisms to dismantle checks and balances piece by piece. The authors call this process “the slow death of democracy by a thousand cuts.”

Democratic erosion often begins with a popular figure who claims to represent the will of “the people” against a corrupt establishment. Once in power, these figures—Chávez in Venezuela, Orbán in Hungary, Erdoğan in Turkey, or Duterte in the Philippines—weaponize institutions to entrench themselves. They stack courts with loyalists, politicize the civil service, harass journalists, and vilify minorities. The transformation happens gradually. To the casual observer, everything still looks democratic—there are elections, legislatures, and constitutions—but their essence has been hollowed out.

Levitsky and Ziblatt emphasize that this pattern is not confined to developing nations. Even established democracies like the United States and the United Kingdom are vulnerable when polarization, populism, and weakened institutions converge.

How Autocrats Rise Within Democracies

The authors identify four early warning signs that a politician may be an authoritarian in democratic clothing:

They note that Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and Alberto Fujimori all displayed these behaviors long before seizing total power. Hitler used democratic elections in 1932 to enter the Reichstag; once in office, he exploited a national emergency to pass the Enabling Act, effectively ending German democracy. Fujimori, elected president of Peru in 1990, used his popularity to dissolve Congress in a “self-coup,” later rewriting the constitution to expand presidential powers.

Modern autocrats follow similar scripts. In Hungary, Orbán claimed to defend “Christian Europe” against immigrants and global elites, but then captured independent media and universities. In Russia, Vladimir Putin manipulated constitutional amendments to extend his rule until at least 2036, imprisoning opponents like Alexei Navalny under fabricated charges.

These examples reveal a shared truth: the most effective authoritarians rise through elections, not revolutions.

The Erosion of Party Gatekeeping

One of the book’s central insights is that democracy depends on strong political parties willing to act as gatekeepers. Parties are supposed to prevent demagogues from gaining power by filtering out extremists and elevating responsible leaders. For most of U.S. history, this system worked.

During the early 20th century, populists like Henry Ford, Father Charles Coughlin, and Huey Long amassed huge followings. Ford, a racist and anti-Semitic industrialist, once considered running for president but was blocked by party insiders. Coughlin, a radio priest, spread fascist rhetoric but was marginalized by both parties. George Wallace, a segregationist Alabama governor, ran as a third-party candidate in 1968, but ...