How Democracies Die

by Steven Levitsky

Under Perón, opposition leader Ricardo Balbín was imprisoned for “disrespecting” the president during an election campaign. Balbín appealed to the supreme court, but since Perón had packed the court, he stood no chance. In Malaysia, Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad used a politically loyal police force and a packed judiciary to investigate, arrest, and imprison his leading rival, Anwar Ibrahim, on sodomy charges in the late 1990s. In Venezuela, opposition leader Leopoldo López was arrested and charged with “inciting violence” during a wave of antigovernment protest in 2014. Government officials provided no evidence of incitement, alleging at one point that it had been “subliminal.”