How Democracies Die

by Steven Levitsky

March 2015 brought another unprecedented event, when Arkansas senator Tom Cotton and forty-six other Republican senators wrote an open letter to Iran’s leaders insisting that President Obama had no authority to negotiate a deal over Iran’s nuclear program. Opposed to the Iran deal and angered by Obama’s decision to use an “executive agreement” rather than a treaty, Senate Republicans intervened in diplomatic negotiations, long the domain of the executive branch. Florida senator Bill Nelson, a moderate Democrat, described the letter as “jaw-dropping….I couldn’t help but reflect, would I have signed such a letter under President George W. Bush? I would never even have contemplated that.” Cotton and his allies had brazenly sought to undermine the authority of a sitting president.