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Steven Levitsky

Tuesday 3rd of March 2026

2016 Presidential election Despite their hemming and hawing most Republican leaders closed ranks behind Trump, creating the image of a unified party. That, in turn, normalized the election. Rather than a moment of crisis, the election became a standard two-party race, with Republicans backing the Republican candidate and Democrats backing the Democratic candidate. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, How Democracies Die  © 2016 Kwiple.com
Authoritarianism Authoritarian forces only succeed when they are tolerated and protected by mainstream politicians. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, Tyranny of the Minority  © 2023 Kwiple.com
Authoritarianism Building on [Juan] Linz's work [in The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes ], 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, and 4) indicates a willingness to curtail the civil liberties of opponents, including the media. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, How Democracies Die  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Authoritarianism  Fear is what often drives authoritarianism. Fear of losing political power and, perhaps more important, fear of losing one's dominant status in society, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, Tyranny of the Minority  © 2023 Kwiple.com
Authoritarianism This is the banality of authoritarianism. Many of the politicians who preside over a democracy's collapse are just ambitious careerists trying to stay in office or perhaps win a higher one. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, Tyranny of the Minority  © 2023 Kwiple.com
Authoritarianism To understand how elected autocrats subtly undermine institutions, it's helpful to imagine a soccer game. To consolidate power, would-be authoritarians must capture the referees, sideline at least at least some of the other side's star players, and rewrite the rules of the game to lock in their advantage, in effect tilting the playing field against their opponent. … Because these measures are carried out piecemeal and with the appearance of legality, the drift into authoritarianism doesn't always set off fire alarms. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, How Democracies Die  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Authoritarianism When faced with a would-be authoritarian, established politicians must unambiguously reject him or her and do everything possible to defend demo- cratic institutions—even if that means temporarily joining with bitter rivals. For Republicans entering the general election of 2016, the implications were clear. If Trump threatened basic demo- cratic principles, they had to stop him. To do anything else would put democracy at risk, and losing democracy is far worse than losing an election. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, How Democracies Die  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Authoritarianism With the exception of Richard Nixon, no major presidential candidate met even one of these four criteria over the last century. … Donald Trump met them all. No other major presidential candidate in modern U.S. history, including Nixon, has demonstrated such a weak public commitment to constitutional rights and democratic norms. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, How Democracies Die  © 2018 Kwiple.com
The Constitution of the United States According to the U.S. Senate, there have been 11,848 attempts to amend the U.S. Constitution. But only twenty-seven of them have been succcesful. America's Constitution has been amended only twelve times since Reconstruction, most recently in 1992 —  more than three decades ago. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, Tyranny of the Minority   [27/11,848 = 0.002279 percent success rate  — a snowball's chance in Hell of amending it] © 2023 Kwiple.com
Democracy The combination of a would-be authoritarian and a major crisis can, therefore, be deadly to democracy. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, How Democracies Die  [because of “rally ’round the flag” effects] © 2018 Kwiple.com
Democracy Democracies cannot survive without some  essential counter-majoritarian institutions. But they also cannot survive — at least as democracies — with excess- ively counter-majoritarian institutions. And that is where the United States finds itself today. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, Tyranny of the Minority  © 2023 Kwiple.com
Democracy Democracies work best – and survive longer – where constitutions are reinforced by unwritten democratic norms. Two basic norms have preserved America's checks and balances in ways we have come to take for granted: mutual toleration, or the understanding that competing parties accept one another as legitimate rivals, and forbearance, or the idea that politicians should exercise restraint in deploying their institutional prerogatives. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, How Democracies Die  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Democracy Democracy's assassins always have accomplices  — political insiders who appear to abide by democracy's rules but quietly assault them. These are what [Juan] Linz called “semi-loyal” democrats. … Indeed, throughout history, cooperation between authoritarians and seemingly respectful semi-loyal democrats has been a recipe for democratic breakdown. …  History teaches us that when mainstream poli-  ticians take the more expedient path of semi- loyality … extremists are often strengthened and a seemingly solid democracy can collapse upon itself. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, Tyranny of the Minority  © 2023 Kwiple.com
Democracy The electoral road to breakdown is dangerously deceptive. With a classic coup d'état … the death of a democracy is immediate and evident to all. The presidential palace burns. The president is killed, imprisoned, or shipped off into exile. The constitution is suspended or scrapped. On the electoral road, none of these things happen. There are no tanks in the streets. Constitutions and other nominally democratic institutions remain in place. People still vote. Elected auto- crats maintain a veneer of democracy while eviscerating its substance. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, How Democracies Die  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Democracy The United States, once a democratic pioneer and a model for other countries, has become a democratic laggard. The endurance of our pre-democratic institutions as other democracies have dismantled theirs makes us a uniquely counter-majoritarian democracy at the dawn of the twenty-first century. … … it is the world's only democracy with both a strong, malapportioned Senate and  a legis-  lative minority veto (the filibuster). In no other democracy do legislative minorities routinely  and permanently thwart legislative majorities. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, Tyranny of the Minority  © 2023 Kwiple.com
Democracy The greatest threat to our democracy  comes not from demagogues like Mr. Trump or even from extremist followers like those who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 but rather from the ordinary politicians, many of them inside the Capitol that day who protect and enable him. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, New York Times, September 8, 2023 © 2023 Kwiple.com
Dysfunction in government The self-styled “Young Guns” [Eric Cantor, Kevin McCarthy, Paul Ryan] decided to make the GOP the “Party of No.” The United States was mired in the deepest economic crisis since the Great Depression, yet Republican legislators planned to not  cooperate with the new [Obama] administration. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, How Democracies Die  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Extremism Although mass responses to extremist appeals matter, what matters more is whether political elites, and expecially parties, serve as filters. Put simply, political parties are democracy's gatekeepers. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, How Democracies Die  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Government [W]e like to believe that the fate of a government lies in the hands of its citizens. If the people hold democratic values, democracy will be safe. If the citizens are open to authoritarian appeals, then, sooner or later, democracy will be in trouble. This view is wrong. It assumes too much of democracy—that “the people” can shape at will the kind of government they possess. It is hard to find any evi- dence of majority support for authori- tarianism in 1920s Germany and Italy. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, How Democracies Die  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Minority rule Minority rule has, in turn, skewed the composition of the Supreme Court. Under Mr. Trump, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh became the first two Supreme Court justices in history to be appointed by a president who lost the popular vote and then be confirmed by senators who  represented less than half the electorate. Amy Coney Barrett is likely to become the third. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, New York Times, October 23, 2020  © 2020 Kwiple.com
Partisanship Being a Democrat or a Republican has become not just a party affiliation but an identiy. A 2016 survey conducted by the Pew Foundation found that 49 percent of Republicans and 52 percent of Democrats say the other party makes them “afraid.” Among politically engaged Americans, the numbers are even higher— 70 percent of Democrats and 62 percent of Republicans say they live in fear of the other party. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, How Democracies Die  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Partisanship [T]he two parties are now divided over race and religion—two deeply polarizing issues that tend to generate greater intolerance and hostility than traditional policy issues such as taxes and government spending. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, How Democracies Die  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Partisanship [W]hen 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. As mutual toleration disappears, politicians grow tempted to abandon forbearance and try to win at all costs. This may encourage the rise of antisystem groups that reject democracy's rules altogether. When that happens, democracy is in trouble. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, How Democracies Die  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Political inequality At no time during the twenty-first century have Senate Republicans represented a majority of the U.S. population. Based on state populations, Senate Democrats have continuously represented more Americans since 1999. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, Tyranny of the Minority  © 2023 Kwiple.com
Political inequality  Four of nine current Supreme Court justices — Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett — were confirmed by a Senate majority that collectively won a minority of the popular vote in Senate elections and represented less than half of the American population. And three of them — Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Coney Barrett — were also nominated by a president who lost the popular vote. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, Tyranny of the Minority  © 2023 Kwiple.com
Political inequality In 1790, a voter in Delaware (the least populous state) had about thirteen times more influence in the U.S. Senate than a voter in the most populous state, Virginia. In 2000, by contrast, a voter in Wyoming has neary seventy times more influence in the U.S. Senate than a voter from California. What began as a strictly small -state bias has become a rural -state bias. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, Tyranny of the Minority  © 2023 Kwiple.com
Political inequality Today … Republicans are predominantly the party of sparsely populated regions,  while Democrats are the party of the cities. As a result, the Constitution's small-state bias, which became a rural  bias in the twentieth century, has become a partisan bias in the twentieth-first century. We are experiencing our own form of “creeping counter-majoritarianism.” Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, Tyranny of the Minority  © 2023 Kwiple.com
Presidency By placing presidential nominations in the hands of voters, binding primaries weakened parties' gatekeeping function, potentially eliminating the peer review process and opening the door to outsiders. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, How Democracies Die  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Presidency These dual imperatives – choosing a popular candidate and keeping out demagogues – may, at times, conflict with each other. What if the people choose a demagogue? This is the recurring tension at the heart of the presidential nomination process, from the founders' era through today. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, How Democracies Die  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Public discourse In the early 1990s, [Newt] Gingrich [then House Minority Whip] 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 traitor . It was the beginning of a seismic shift in American politics. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, How Democracies Die  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Semi-loyal democrats It is semi-loyalists’ very respectability that makes them so dangerous. As members of the establishment, semi-loyalists can use their positions of authority to normalize antidemocratic extremists, protect them against efforts to hold them legally accountable and empower them by opening doors to the mainstream media, campaign donors and other resources. It is this subtle enabling of extremist forces that can fatally weaken democracies. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, who acknowledge Juan Linz originated the notion and term "semi-loyal democrats", in New York Times, September 8, 2023 © 2023 Kwiple.com
Semi-loyal democrats Many mainstream politicians who preside over a democracy’s collapse are not authoritarians committed to overthrowing the system; they are  careerists who are simply trying to get ahead. They are less opposed to democracy than indifferent to it. Careerism is a normal part of politics. But when democracy is at stake, choosing political ambition over its defense can be lethal. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, who acknowledge Juan Linz originated the notion and term "semi-loyal democrats", in New York Times, September 8, 2023 © 2023 Kwiple.com
Semi-loyal democrats Rather than sever ties to antidemocratic extremists, semi-loyalists tolerate and accommodate them. Rather than condemn and seek accountability for antidemocratic acts committed by ideological allies, semi-loyalists turn a blind eye, denying, downplaying and even justifying those acts  — often via what is today called whataboutism. Or they simply remain silent. And when they are faced with a choice between joining forces with partisan rivals to defend democracy or preserving their relationship with antidemocratic allies, semi-loyalists opt for their allies. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, who acknowledge Juan Linz originated the notion and term "semi-loyal democrats", in New York Times, September 8, 2023 © 2023 Kwiple.com
Snapshot Trump, even before his inauguration, tested positive on all four measures on our litmus test for autocrats [authoritarians]. Donald Trump portrayed by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt © 2018 Kwiple.com
State of the union Is our democracy in danger? It is a question we never thought we'd be asking. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, How Democracies Die  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Voter ID laws Of the eleven states with the highest black turnout in 2008, seven adopted stricter voter ID laws, and of the twelve states that experienced the highest rates of Hispanic population growth between 2000 and 2010, nine passed laws making it harder to vote. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, How Democracies Die  © 2018 Kwiple.com
 
Voting rights Five unelected Supreme Court justices dis-  mantled an unmistakingly democratizing law,  the VRA [Voting Rights Act], which had been passed and renewed on muitiple occasions.  In 2019, when efforts to restore the VRA were blocked by a Republican Senate majority, that majority represented seven million fewer voters than the Senate Democratic minority that backed it. In January 2022,  when majorities in both houses of Congress  — and more than 60 percent of Americans — backed voting rights legislation, it was blocked by a minority in the Senate. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, Tyranny of the Minority  © 2023 Kwiple.com