Belfer Case Study Room (S020), CGIS South, 1730 Cambridge St., Cambridge, MA 02138
Book Talk with Steve Levitsky & Daniel Ziblatt
Join Steve Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt as they discuss their new book, Tyranny of the Minority: Why American Democracy Reached the Breaking Point.
This event is free, but registration is requested. REGISTER HERE.
America is undergoing a massive experiment: It is moving, in fits and starts, toward a multiracial democracy, something few societies have ever done. But the prospect of change has sparked an authoritarian backlash that threatens the very foundations of our political system. Why is democracy under assault here, and not in other wealthy, diversifying nations? And what can we do to save it?
With the clarity and brilliance that made their first book, How Democracies Die, a global bestseller, Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt offer a coherent framework for understanding these volatile times. They draw on a wealth of examples—from 1930s France to present-day Thailand—to explain why and how political parties turn against democracy. They then show how our Constitution makes us uniquely vulnerable to attacks from within: It is a pernicious enabler of minority rule, allowing partisan minorities to consistently thwart and even rule over popular majorities. Most modern democracies—from Germany and Sweden to Argentina and New Zealand—have eliminated outdated institutions like elite upper chambers, indirect elections, and lifetime tenure for judges. The United States lags dangerously behind.
Steven Levitsky is David Rockefeller Professor of Latin American Studies and Professor of Government. He is also Director of Harvard’s David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard. His research focuses on democratization and authoritarianism, political parties, and weak and informal institutions, with a focus on Latin America. He is co-author, with Daniel Ziblatt, of How Democracies Die (Crown, 2018), which was a New York Times Best-Seller and was published in 25 languages. He has written or edited 12 other books, including Transforming Labor-Based Parties in Latin America: Argentine Peronism in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge University Press 2003), Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes after the Cold War (with Lucan Way) (Cambridge University Press, 2010), and Revolution and Dictatorship: The Violent Origins of Durable Authoritarianism (with Lucan Way) (Princeton University Press, 2022).
Daniel Ziblatt is Eaton Professor of Government at Harvard University and director of the Transformations of Democracy group at Berlin’s Social Science Center (WZB Berlin Social Science Center). He is the author of five books, including How Democracies Die (Crown, 2018), co-authored with Steve Levitsky, a New York Times best-seller and described by The Economist magazine as “the most important book of the Trump era.” In 2017, he authored Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy (Cambridge University Press), an account of the history of democracy in Europe, which won the American Political Science Association’s 2018 Woodrow Wilson Prize for the best book in government and international relations. His first book was an analysis of 19th century state building, Structuring the State: The Formation of Italy and Germany and the Puzzle of Federalism (Princeton, 2006).