How Democracies Die

by Steven Levitsky

Because there is no single moment—no coup, declaration of martial law, or suspension of the constitution—in which the regime obviously “crosses the line” into dictatorship, nothing may set off society’s alarm bells. Those who denounce government abuse may be dismissed as exaggerating or crying wolf. Democracy’s erosion is, for many, almost imperceptible.

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. These two norms undergirded American democracy for most of the twentieth century. Leaders of the two major parties accepted one another as legitimate and resisted the temptation to use their temporary control of institutions to maximum partisan advantage. Norms of toleration and restraint served as the soft guardrails of American democracy, helping it avoid the kind of partisan fight to the death that has destroyed democracies elsewhere in the world, including Europe in the 1930s and South America in the 1960s and 1970s.

The weakening of our democratic norms is rooted in extreme partisan polarization—one that extends beyond policy differences into an existential conflict over race and culture. America’s efforts to achieve racial equality as our society grows increasingly diverse have fueled an insidious reaction and intensifying polarization. And if one thing is clear from studying breakdowns throughout history, it’s that extreme polarization can kill democracies. There are, therefore, reasons for alarm. Not

The abdication of political responsibility by existing leaders often marks a nation’s first step toward authoritarianism.

Building on Linz’s work, 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, or 4) indicates a willingness to curtail the civil liberties of opponents, including the media.

In Austria in 2016, the main center-right party (the Austrian People’s Party, ÖVP) effectively kept the radical-right Freedom Party (FPÖ) out of the presidency. Austria has a long history of extreme right politics, and the FPÖ is one of Europe’s strongest far-right parties. Austria’s political system was growing vulnerable because the two main parties, the Social Democratic SPÖ and the Christian Democratic ÖVP, which had alternated in the presidency throughout the postwar period, were weakening. In 2016, their dominance was challenged by two upstarts—the Green Party’s former chairman, Alexander Van der Bellen, and the extremist FPÖ leader Norbert Hofer. To the surprise of most analysts, the first round left Van der Bellen and the right-wing outsider Hofer as the two candidates in a second-round runoff. After a procedural error in October 2016, the runoff was held in December. At this point, several leading politicians, including some from the conservative ÖVP, argued that Hofer and his Freedom Party had to be defeated. Hofer had appeared to encourage violence against immigrants, and many questioned whether an elected Hofer would privilege his party in ways that violated long-standing norms of the president remaining above politics. In the face of this threat, some important ÖVP leaders worked to defeat Hofer by supporting their ideological rival, the left-leaning Green candidate, Van der Bellen. The ÖVP’s presidential candidate, Andreas Khol, endorsed Van der Bellen, as di...

This stance took considerable political courage. According to one Catholic Party mayor of a small city outside Vienna, Stefan Schmuckenschlager, who endorsed the Green Party candidate, it was a decision that split families.

reached up to forty million listeners a week. Father Coughlin was openly antidemocratic, calling for the abolition of political parties and questioning the value of elections. His newspaper, Social Justice, adopted pro-fascist positions in the 1930s, naming Mussolini its “Man of the Week” and often defending the Nazi regime. Despite his extremism, Father Coughlin was immensely popular. Fortune magazine called him “just about the biggest thing ever to happen to radio.” He delivered speeches to packed stadiums and auditoriums across the country; as he traveled from city to city, fans lined his route to see him passing by. Some contemporary observers called him the most influential figure in the United States after Roosevelt.

The Kingfish was a gifted stump speaker, and he routinely flouted the rule of law. As governor, Long built what Schlesinger described as “the nearest approach to a totalitarian state the American republic has ever seen,” using a mix of bribes and threats to bring the state’s legislature, judges, and press to heel. Asked by an opposition legislator if he had heard of the state constitution, Long replied, “I’m the constitution just now.” Newspaper editor Hodding Carter called Long “the first true dictator out of the soil of America.” When Franklin Roosevelt’s campaign manager, James A. Farley, met Mussolini in Rome in 1933, he wrote that the Italian dictator “reminded me of Huey Long.”

In short, Americans have long had an authoritarian streak. It was not unusual for figures such as Coughlin, Long, McCarthy, and Wallace to gain the support of a sizable minority—30 or even 40 percent—of the

Alexander Hamilton worried that a popularly elected presidency could be too easily captured by those who would play on fear and ignorance to win elections and then rule as tyrants. “History will teach us,” Hamilton wrote in the Federalist Papers, that “of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the great number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people; commencing demagogues, and ending tyrants.”

Under this arrangement, Hamilton reasoned, “the office of president will seldom fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications.” Men with “talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity” would be filtered out. The Electoral College thus became our original gatekeeper.

The rise of parties in the early 1800s changed the way our electoral system worked. Instead of electing local notables as delegates to the Electoral College, as the founders had envisioned, each state began to elect party loyalists. Electors became party agents, which meant that the Electoral College surrendered its gatekeeping authority to the parties. The parties have retained it ever since.

Parties, then, became the stewards of American democracy. Because they select our presidential candidates, parties have the ability—and, we would add, the responsibility—to keep dangerous figures out of the White House.

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. An overreliance on gatekeeping is, in itself, undemocratic—it can create a world of party bosses who ignore the rank and file and fail to represent the people. But an overreliance on the “will of the people” can also be dangerous, for it can lead to the election of a demagogue who threatens democracy itself. There is no escape from this tension. There are always trade-offs.

The system was soon criticized as too closed, so beginning in the 1830s, candidates were nominated in national party conventions made up of delegates from each state. Delegates were not popularly elected; they were chosen by state and local political party committees, and they were not bound to support particular candidates. They generally followed the instructions of the state party leaders who sent them to the convention. The system thus favored insiders, or candidates backed by the party leaders who controlled the delegates.

Consider Henry Ford, the founder of the Ford Motor Company. One of the richest men in the world in the early twentieth century, Ford was a modern version of the kind of extremist demagogue Hamilton had warned against. Using his Dearborn Independent as a megaphone, he railed against bankers, Jews, and Bolsheviks, publishing articles claiming that Jewish banking interests were conspiring against America. His views attracted praise from racists worldwide.

“Politics in Chaos as Ford Vote Grows” and “Ford Leads in Presidential Free-for-All.” By the end of the two-month straw poll of upward of 250,000 readers, Henry Ford ran away from the competition, outpacing all twelve contenders, including President Warren Harding and future president Herbert Hoover. With these results, Collier’s editors concluded, “Henry Ford has become the issue in American politics.”

Despite popular enthusiasm for his candidacy, Ford was effectively locked out of contention. Senator James Couzens called the idea of his candidacy ridiculous. “How can a man over sixty years old, who…has no training, no experience, aspire to such an office?” he asked. “It is most ridiculous.”

The McGovern–Fraser Commission issued a set of recommendations that the two parties adopted before the 1972 election. What emerged was a system of binding presidential primaries. Beginning in 1972, the vast majority of the delegates to both the Democratic and Republican conventions would be elected in state-level primaries and caucuses.

The Democrats, whose initial primaries were volatile and divisive, backtracked somewhat in the early 1980s, stipulating that a share of national delegates would be elected officials—governors, big-city mayors, senators, and congressional representatives—appointed by state parties rather than elected in primaries. These “superdelegates,” representing between 15 and 20 percent of national delegates, would serve as a counterbalance to primary voters—and a mechanism for party leaders to fend off candidates they disapproved of.

Just before the McGovern–Fraser Commission began its work, two prominent political scientists warned that primaries could “lead to the appearance of extremist candidates and demagogues” who, unrestrained by party allegiances, “have little to lose by stirring up mass hatreds or making absurd promises.”

The post-1972 primary system was especially vulnerable to a particular kind of outsider: individuals with enough fame or money to skip the “invisible primary.” In other words, celebrities.

But the world had changed. Party gatekeepers were shells of what they once were, for two main reasons. One was a dramatic increase in the availability of outside money, accelerated (though hardly caused) by the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United ruling. Now even marginal presidential candidates—Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Howard Dean, Bernie Sanders—could raise large sums of money, either by finding their own billionaire financier or through small donations via the Internet.

The other major factor diminishing the power of traditional gatekeepers was the explosion of alternative media, particularly cable news and social media. Whereas the path to national name recognition once ran through relatively few mainstream channels, which favored establishment politicians over extremists, the new media environment made it easier for celebrities to achieve wide name recognition—and public support—practically overnight.

Fox News and influential radio talk-show personalities—what political commentator David Frum calls the “conservative entertainment complex”—radicalized conservative voters, to the benefit of ideologically extreme candidates.

Trump refused to say he would accept the results of the election if he were defeated. According to historian Douglas Brinkley, no major presidential candidate had cast such doubt on the democratic system since 1860. Only in the run-up to the Civil War did we see major politicians “delegitimizing the federal government” in this way. As Brinkley put it, “That’s a secessionist, revolutionary motif. That’s someone trying to topple the apple cart entirely.”

In the last century, no major-party presidential candidate has ever endorsed violence (George Wallace did in 1968, but he was a third-party candidate). Trump broke this pattern. During the campaign, Trump not only tolerated violence among his supporters but at times appeared to revel in it. In a radical break with established norms of civility, Trump embraced—and even encouraged—supporters who physically assaulted protesters. He offered to pay the legal fees of a supporter who sucker-punched and threatened to kill a protester at a rally in Fayetteville, North Carolina.

“If you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them, would ya? Seriously. Just knock the hell out of them. I promise you I will pay the legal fees. I promise.” (February 1, 2016, Iowa)

“I love the old days. You know what they used to do to guys like that when they were in a place like this? They’d be carried out on a stretcher, folks. It’s true….I’d like to punch him in the face, I’ll tell you.” (February 22, 2016, Nevada)

“We had some people, some rough guys like we have right in here. And they started punching back. It was a beautiful thing. I mean, they started punching back. In the good old days, this doesn’t happen, because they used to treat them very, very rough. And when they protested once, you know, they would not do it so easily again. But today, they walk in and they put their hand up and put the wrong finger in the air at everybody, and they get away with murder, because we’ve become weak.” (March 9, 2016, North Carolina)

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. Trump was precisely the kind of figure that had haunted Hamilton and other founders when they created the American presidency.

The second is what sociologist Ivan Ermakoff calls “ideological collusion,” in which the authoritarian’s agenda overlaps sufficiently with that of mainstream politicians that abdication is desirable, or at least preferable to the alternatives.

For Republicans entering the general election of 2016, the implications were clear. If Trump threatened basic democratic 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. This meant doing what was, to many, the unthinkable: backing Hillary Clinton for president. The United States has a two-party system; only two candidates stood a chance to win the 2016 election, and one of them was a demagogue. For Republicans, it tested their political courage. Would they accept short-term

As we showed earlier, there is a precedent for such behavior. In 2016, Austrian conservatives backed Green Party candidate Alexander Van der Bellen to prevent the election of far-right radical Norbert Hofer. And in 2017, defeated French conservative candidate François Fillon called on his partisans to vote for center-left candidate Emmanuel Macron to keep far-right candidate Marine Le Pen out of power. In both these cases, right-wing politicians endorsed ideological rivals—angering much of the party base but redirecting substantial numbers of their voters to keep extremists out of power.

Leading national Republican politicians such as Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, Marco Rubio, and Ted Cruz endorsed Donald Trump. The only Republican figures of any prominence who endorsed Hillary Clinton were retired politicians or former government officials—people who were not planning to compete in future elections, who, politically, had nothing to lose.

A handful of active Republican leaders, including Senators McCain, Mark Kirk, Susan Collins, Kelly Ayotte, Mike Lee, Lisa Murkowski, and Ben Sasse, Governors John Kasich and Charlie Baker, and former governors Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney, refused to endorse Trump. Former president George W. Bush remained silent. None of them, however, was willing to endorse Clinton.

What happened, tragically, was very different. 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.

The process often begins with words. Demagogues attack their critics in harsh and provocative terms—as enemies, as subversives, and even as terrorists. When he first ran for president, Hugo Chávez described his opponents as “rancid pigs” and “squalid oligarchs.” As president, he called his critics “enemies” and “traitors”; Fujimori linked his opponents to terrorism and drug trafficking; and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi attacked judges who ruled against him as “communist.” Journalists also become targets. Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa called the media a “grave political enemy” that “has to be defeated.” Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan accused journalists of propagating “terrorism.” These attacks can be consequential: If the public comes to share the view that opponents are linked to terrorism and the media are spreading lies, it becomes easier to justify taking actions against them.

Whereas family businesses and army squadrons may be ruled by fiat, democracies require negotiation, compromise, and concessions. Setbacks are inevitable, victories always partial. Presidential initiatives may die in congress or be blocked by the courts. All politicians are frustrated by these constraints, but democratic ones know they must accept them.

Capturing the referees provides the government with more than a shield. It also offers a powerful weapon, allowing the government to selectively enforce the law, punishing opponents while protecting allies. Tax authorities may be used to target rival politicians, businesses, and media outlets. The police can crack down on opposition protest while tolerating acts of violence by progovernment thugs. Intelligence agencies can be used to spy on critics and dig up material for blackmail.

Most often, the capture of the referees is done by quietly firing civil servants and other nonpartisan officials and replacing them with loyalists. In Hungary, for example, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán packed the nominally independent Prosecution Service, State Audit Office,

In each of these cases, the referees of the democratic game were brought over to the government’s side, providing the incumbent with both a shield against constitutional challenges and a powerful—and “legal”—weapon with which to assault its opponents.

Once the referees are in tow, elected autocrats can turn to their opponents. Most contemporary autocracies do not wipe out all traces of dissent, as Mussolini did in fascist Italy or Fidel Castro did in communist Cuba. But many make an effort to ensure that key players—anyone capable of really hurting the government—are sidelined, hobbled, or bribed into throwing the game. Key players might include opposition politicians, business leaders who finance the opposition, major media outlets, and in some cases, religious or other cultural figures who enjoy a certain public moral standing.

Governments may also use their control of referees to “legally” sideline the opposition media, often through libel or defamation suits.

Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa was masterful at this. In 2011, he won a massive $40 million libel suit against the owners and editor of a major newspaper, El Universo, for publishing an editorial that labeled him a “dictator.” Correa called the case a “great step forward for the liberation of our Americas from one of the largest and most unpunished powers: the corrupt media.”

In Venezuela, the Chávez government launched an investigation into financial irregularities committed by Globovisión television owner Guillermo Zuloaga, forcing him to flee the country to avoid arrest. Under intense financial pressure, Zuloaga eventually sold Globovisión to a government-friendly businessman.

As key media outlets are assaulted, others grow wary and begin to practice self-censorship. When the Chávez government stepped up its attacks in the mid-2000s, one of the country’s largest television networks, Venevisión, decided to stop covering politics.

Finally, elected autocrats often try to silence cultural figures—artists, intellectuals, pop stars, athletes—whose popularity or moral standing makes them potential threats. When Argentine literary icon Jorge Luis Borges emerged as a high-profile critic of Perón (one fellow writer described Borges as a “sort of Anti-Perón”), government officials had him transferred from his municipal library post to what Borges described as an “inspectorship of poultry and rabbits.” Borges resigned and was unable to find employment for months.

And when opposition politicians are arrested or exiled, as in Venezuela, other politicians decide to give up and retire. Many dissenters decide to stay home rather than enter politics, and those who remain active grow demoralized. This is what the government aims for. Once key opposition, media, and business players are bought off or sidelined, the opposition deflates. The government “wins” without necessarily breaking the rules.