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citylifejc 's review for:
How Democracies Die: What History Reveals About Our Future
by Steven Levitsky, Daniel Ziblatt
I basically underlined the entire book.
I heard the authors interviewed a couple of years ago on Ezra Klein’s podcast and the thing that stuck with me most was the idea that America wasn’t truly a democracy until the 1960s - following the Civil Rights & Voting Rights Acts - and that since then we have become increasingly polarized and defined by race and religion - curious, huh? As described in the book, even when our democracy was working it did so only when the parties basically tabled the needs of POC.
The major focus of the book is looking at America in the context of other countries that have seen their democracies crumble into authoritarianism. We aren’t looking so great but it’s not all Donald Trump’s fault. A lot of the blame is placed on the dwindling constituency of the Republican party - particularly the Gingrich revolution from which defining your opposition as enemies that are existential threats to the nation. Democrats to a lesser extent have contributed to eroding. some of our democracy’s safeguards.
There are a lot of interesting parallels to other countries throughout history and how they have either managed to or failed to deal with polarization. And there’s their chilling four criteria of authoritarian behavior:
1) Rejection or weak commitment to democratic rules of the game.
2) Denial of the legitimacy of political opponents
3) Toleration or encouragement of violence.
4) readiness to curtail civil liberties of opponents, including media
Anyhow don’t need to recap whole thing - it’s all very interesting stuff and very readable - finished it in 2-3 days. Check it out or at very least listen to the Ezra Klein interview which gets at the meat of it!
I heard the authors interviewed a couple of years ago on Ezra Klein’s podcast and the thing that stuck with me most was the idea that America wasn’t truly a democracy until the 1960s - following the Civil Rights & Voting Rights Acts - and that since then we have become increasingly polarized and defined by race and religion - curious, huh? As described in the book, even when our democracy was working it did so only when the parties basically tabled the needs of POC.
The major focus of the book is looking at America in the context of other countries that have seen their democracies crumble into authoritarianism. We aren’t looking so great but it’s not all Donald Trump’s fault. A lot of the blame is placed on the dwindling constituency of the Republican party - particularly the Gingrich revolution from which defining your opposition as enemies that are existential threats to the nation. Democrats to a lesser extent have contributed to eroding. some of our democracy’s safeguards.
There are a lot of interesting parallels to other countries throughout history and how they have either managed to or failed to deal with polarization. And there’s their chilling four criteria of authoritarian behavior:
1) Rejection or weak commitment to democratic rules of the game.
2) Denial of the legitimacy of political opponents
3) Toleration or encouragement of violence.
4) readiness to curtail civil liberties of opponents, including media
Anyhow don’t need to recap whole thing - it’s all very interesting stuff and very readable - finished it in 2-3 days. Check it out or at very least listen to the Ezra Klein interview which gets at the meat of it!