How Democracies Die - Daniel Ziblatt and Steven Levitzky

Rating: ⭐ 4/5

To rate this book, I have split into three parts

• How democracies die 5/5
• How the American democracy is dying 5/5
• How to fix it. 2/5

The first is very interesting, they break down key aspects of traits in leaders/ruling parties that have historically led to the breakdown of democracy. These are mapped to South American, African and East Asian dictators over the last 200 years and the American South before the civil war and some politicians since. They provide a concise but complete checklist and show how each of these in turn damage a democracy.

Mapping these qualities onto the American political system is quite scary. Donald trump (and others) have many of these qualities and it’s not hard to understand the trajectory. They take a deep dive into how the political voting system within parties changed and how that has allowed DT to come to power twice. They make an interesting point about political “powerbrokers” - the more power they have the less democratic a system, but the more likely outsiders/deviants can’t get elected.

I think their ideas for how to fix the issues in America lacked sensibility. One of the key points they raise is the adversarial nature. It has become worse that the opponent win, than democratic norms are upheld. After the civil war, policies that maintained peace in the south also led to the disenfranchisement of the black population, causing generations of harm. Current political messages from republicans center around immigrants and Muslims, the authors argue that democrats must not give in or allow policies that harm those populations. I agree with this. I am also left leaning. From my (and the authors) points of view policies that harm those populations are categorically a bad thing. They say that Democrats should double down on policies that support the working class, poor, and immigrant communities, but I believe that this will put them further at odds, and increase the divide, with the republican party.

If we were talking about other disagreements, eg wether public transport should be state or privately funded, a compromise in the middle (part state funded, state funded for some people) doesn’t seem so bad and is not worth risking political divide over. However, when we talk about discriminatory policies against entire populations, any form compromise is not acceptable and as such, methods to win that end up destabalising the democracy are seen as an option. I cannot think of a solution here that will not either harm minorities, or further destabalise the democracy. Scary.