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A review by pawact
How Democracies Die: What History Reveals About Our Future by Daniel Ziblatt, Steven Levitsky
3.0
Informative, prescient and wholly depressing, How Democracies Die lays out all the symptoms of a decaying democracies citing examples from all over the world including pre-Trump United States. There are some fascinating tidbits in here that are great at dinner parties. Levitsky is for certain not woke as he adds court packing as one of those particular signs and signals that two party systems inherently keeps populism (of the bad sort) in check. He specifically considers political parties important gatekeepers to keep demagogues from achieving the presidency and pointedly singles out the Republican party for failing to do the job. Interestingly, the Democrat party managed to gatekeep Bernie Sanders who, though he for sure rode a populist wave, is clearly no demagogue.
Alot of this is interesting stuff. But you just wish it wasn't quite so dry. Yeah, Levitsky is an academic and he is basically dumbing down a lot of facts and theories for the masses, but one wished he would get his gumption up and add a little flash to the proceedings.
Alot of this is interesting stuff. But you just wish it wasn't quite so dry. Yeah, Levitsky is an academic and he is basically dumbing down a lot of facts and theories for the masses, but one wished he would get his gumption up and add a little flash to the proceedings.