How Democracies Die

Anyone who is concerned about the future of democracy should read this brisk, accessible book. Anyone who is not concerned should definitely read it. – Daron Acemoglu, co-author of Why Nations FailHow Democracies Die by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt is a useful primer on the importance of norms, institutional restraints and civic participation in maintaining a democracy - and how quickly those things can erode when we’re not paying attention * President Barack Obama *With great energy and integrity [Levitsky and Ziblatt] apply their expertise to the current problems of the United States. – Timothy Snyder, author of On TyrannyWe owe the authors a debt of thanks for bringing their deep understanding to bear on the central political issue of the day. – Francis Fukuyama, author of Political Order and Political DecayWhat’s the worst thing to happen to US democracy recently? Most answers to that question start and end with Donald Trump. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, though as horrified by Trump as anyone, try to take a wider view. This book looks to history to provide a guide for defending democratic norms when they are under threat, and finds that it is possible to fight back. Provocative and readable. – David Runciman * The Guardian *

There are two must-read books about the Trump presidency at the moment. This is the one you probably haven’t heard of. It is also the one that is most useful to British readers. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt are anti-Donald Trump politics professors at Harvard. And the big advantage of political scientists over even the shrewdest and luckiest of eavesdropping journalists is that they have the training to give us a bigger picture.They set out some rules about the slow, internal collapse of democracies, which are entirely relevant to Britain…

Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt are Professors of Government at Harvard University and have spent their careers studying democracies in crisis. Levitsky is the author of Competitive Authoritarianism and is the recipient of numerous teaching awards. Ziblatt is the author, most recently, of Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy.