Nicolay B. Johansen, Lov/Urett
Long read. 5 parts.
Is democracy in danger? The award-winning authors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt pose the question in their book, «How democracies die«. The book ultimately became a bestseller and is now considered a classic on the topic of democracy’s vulnerability. Together with Timothy Snyder and David Runciman, among others, these authors are recognized as leaders in this field. Snyder is probably the one who has most actively entered the fight to defend democracy; he is known for his easily accessible books On Tyranny, On Freedom, and The Road to Unfreedom. Runciman has left his academic post to run a podcast in the same spirit. However, this note is about the book by Levitsky and Ziblatt. Here, you will find a summary of a selection of the main points, accompanied by brief explanatory comments.
«How Democracies Die» was published in early 2018, one year after Donald J. Trump took office as the 45th President of the United States. That raised an important question. The authors, who are political science professors at a prominent American university (Harvard), note that democracy has a well-established set of safeguards that support it. Nonetheless, they are concerned, and not just for the United States.
A tour of the world offers some initial observations. First, many efforts to abolish democracy are deemed “legal.” They are carried out within the boundaries of law and the rule of law. The original example for this approach is Hitler’s takeover in 1933. Hitler had attempted a failed coup ten years earlier and was sentenced to prison for it, during which he wrote the book “Mein Kampf.” The lesson he learned was that he could do it “legally” next time. And it worked. Now it is time to learn from it.
Hitler and the Nazis’ rise to power have become the standard for all political history since World War II. The reason is that the atrocities they committed still serve as the moral foundation of Western civilization. The Nazi regime exemplifies «the worst that could happen» culturally. Social structures are then built to prevent «it happening again». There are many accounts of Hitler’s rise to power; personally, I have used Shirer’s “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich”, but Levitsky and Ziblatt do not pretend to tell this story in full.
Western societies have created various measures to prevent the unimaginable from happening again. Most nations have some form of constitutional safeguard that stops similar political ideas from gaining ground. In Germany, Nazi ideologies are banned in public, and they have their own court to ensure proposed laws stay within constitutional limits. Germany probably has the strongest protections, often linked to a culturally ingrained sense of guilt.
On a global level, the UN was created as a direct result of World War II, with its Universal Declaration of Human Rights serving as the primary example of international law. Human rights and the ban on discrimination have expanded in many countries since then. Human rights were incorporated into the Norwegian Constitution during its 200th anniversary in 2014.
Democracy is impossible without the rule of law and the separation of powers. However, the rule of law is more than just dividing power into the legislative, executive, and judicial branches. It also requires a deeper understanding of how democracy and the rule of law are connected to see how this type of society is vulnerable to autocratic attempts to take control. Levitsky and Ziblatt address this issue. At the same time, a key point for them is that democracies also depend on informal norms. These culturally supported informal norms are actually essential for maintaining democracy.
Levitsky and Ziblatt’s book begins with the US system of governance but also draws on experiences from countries like Chile, Hungary, Poland, Peru, Turkey, and Venezuela. The conclusions they reach are relevant to all democracies.
The first step they take is to address democracy and the political space. Below, I will 1) list some events that do not belong in the political space, each of which should raise alarms. Then, I will 2) focus on informal norms that are essential for protecting a democracy, highlighting two specific ones as the most important.
0. The short version
Politics is to tolerate disagreement. It is to disagree about how the state should manage its resources, without resorting to violence. Runciman places particular emphasis on the fact that violence and politics are opposites. Another point, as mentioned above, is that anti-democratic forces utilize democratic institutions and the rule of law against the system itself. It may seem paradoxical, but that is also the starting point for Levitsky and Ziblatt.
The authors outline their reasoning (pages 8-9) by stating that their system of «checks and balances» (the rule of law) has worked well as it was designed by the founders (late 18th century). Democracies tend to function best and last longer when the constitution is reinforced by unwritten democratic norms. These norms are the central focus of their presentation. The first is mutual tolerance, meaning an understanding where the competing parties accept each other as legitimate rivals. The second is restraint, which is a norm that politicians who take office avoid using all the powers available to them against their opponents.
These norms upheld American democracy for most of the 20th century, the authors say. They acted as a “soft railing” for democracy, preventing politics from devolving into a polarized, war-like struggle, as seen in many other countries where democracies have collapsed—such as Europe in the 1930s, South America in the 1960s and 1970s, and numerous other examples discussed in the book.
Today, it is observed that democratic norms have weakened, they say. This process began in the late 1980s and has accelerated since the turn of the millennium. Since Barack Obama was elected president in 2008, he and the Democrats’ counterparts, the Republicans, have been especially guilty of questioning the legitimacy of their opponents. They have abandoned the norm of restraint. They act as if all means are allowed. Trump has reinforced this trend, but he did not create it. Polarization goes deeper than that. It is about an existential «racial» and cultural divide, the authors say. And if history can teach us anything, it is that extreme polarization destroys democracies.
There was therefore reason to sound the alarm, they said already in 2018. Not only had they elected a populist as president in 2018, but they had done so at a time when the defenses of democracy were weaker than ever in the modern age of democracy (page 9).
If you just need an overview of Levitsky and Ziblatt’s argument, you can stop reading here. For a detailed review with more examples, you’ll need to get the book. It’s available as an audiobook and an e-book, and it costs less than $20 in paperback. If you’re looking for a slightly more in-depth presentation of the content, you can read more here.
1. Behavior that should be a cause for concern
A main point for the authors is that democracies do not develop on their own. They rely on institutions. For example, democracy cannot function without people voting. One of the most crucial institutions is therefore political parties. The leaders of these parties avoid democratic oversight in several ways, but they often serve as a screening process. They have prevented unsuitable candidates.
In the political system, one must be able to accept disagreement, but one can also form alliances. This is an almost unquestionable good.
But only almost, because sometimes one forms alliances with parties that exploit the agreement solely for their own benefit and use it to undermine democratic institutions. Hitler’s path to power is a classic example of this, which also provides the backdrop for the authors’ first major move—they identify four behaviors in political life that can help recognize authoritarian politicians when they appear. We should be concerned, they write, when a politician 1) rejects democratic rules of the game, 2) questions the legitimacy of opponents, 3) tolerates or encourages violence, or 4) shows a willingness to restrict opponents’ civil liberties, including the media. I include here Table 1 from page 23 of my edition, which elaborates on these points:
Four key indicators of authoritarian leanings:
- Rejection of (or weak commitment to) democratic rules of the game
- Do they reject the Constitution or express a willingness to violate it?
- Do they suggest a need for antidemocratic measures, such as canceling elections, violating or suspending the Constitution, banning certain organizations, or restricting basic civil or political rights?
- Do they seek to use (or endorse the use of) extraconstitutional means to change the government, such as military coups, violent insurrections, or mass protests aimed at forcing a change in the government?
- Do they attempt to undermine the legitimacy of elections, for example, by refusing to accept credible electoral results?
- Denial of the legitimacy of political opponents
- Do they describe their rivals as subversive, or opposed to the existing constitutional order?
- Do they claim that their rivals constitute an existential threat , either to national security or to the prevailing way of life?
- Do they baselessly describe their partisan rivals as criminals, whose supposed violation of the law (or potential to do so) disqualifies them from full participation in the political arena?
- Do they baselessly suggest that their rivals are foreign agents, in that they are secretly working in alliance with (or the employ of) a foreign government — usually an enemy one?
- Toleration or encouragement of violence
- Do they have any ties to armed gangs, paramilitary forces, militias, guerrillas, or other organizations that engage in illicit violence?
- Have they or their partisan allies sponsored or encouraged mob attacks on opponents?
- Have they tacitly endorsed violence by their supporters by refusing to unambiguously condemn it and punish it?
- Have they praised (or refused to condemn) other significant acts of political violence, either in the past or elsewhere in the world?
- Readiness to curtail civil liberties of opponents, including media.
- Have they supported laws or policies that restrict civil liberties, such as expanded libel or defamation laws, or laws restricting protest , criticism of the government, or certain civic or political organizations?
- Have they threatened to take legal or other punitive action against critics in rival parties, civil society, or the media?
- Have they praised repressive measures taken by other governments, either in the past or elsewhere in the world?
This is a checklist we can hang on the wall, perhaps next to Timothy Snyder’s 20 Rules to Remember in the Face of Tyranny.
However, it is also important to keep in mind an observation the authors make in Chapter 3 («The Great American Abdication»), which is that until the turn of the millennium, hardly any president in the United States had responded on these points. Presidential candidate Trump, however, responded to every one of them.
It is alarming enough on its own, and as this is being written, the same president appears serious about using violence against his own population and opponents. He has stated that he hates them and has repeatedly said they are sick and dangerous, all without any basis in facts. An additional point in this context is that, even as a presidential candidate, he not only responded to all these indicators but did so without
1) the leadership of the Republican Party stopping him,
2) the media managing make him politically dead, and
3) the voters turning their backs on him.
This is not a note about President Trump, but about how democracies die and what makes them vulnerable. On the political level, this happens when politicians fail to fulfill their duties to democracy. They may think that an authoritarian leader can be kept in check, even if he or she uses force, or that there is a partial common interest between legitimate political parties and authoritarian forces (both were present in Hitler’s case). This is probably also true in Trump’s case, where the Republicans’ desire for tax cuts and reduced immigration, along with cultural issues like abortion, aligned with Trump’s MAGA movement.
This is a lesson that is especially important in conservative circles (in Norway, Bård Larsen has been particularly good at reminding us of this point). But it is equally essential to be aware of how authoritarian forces undermine democracy on the rule of law’s own half of the track.
Undermining democracy
Democracy is being undermined slowly and in small steps. Secondly, this activity targets both formal and informal rules.
The formal foundation is known in Norwegian as the rules for lawmaking, the exercise of power, and the authority of the courts. In the USA, they refer to “checks and balances.» For example, no laws are valid unless a “competent” Storting has adopted them. What does it mean to be competent? The rules of procedure explain this to us. Still, the laws of procedure can be changed, twisted, and bent.
The Constitution and other legislation limit the executive power; they cannot make decisions on their own discretion. The courts must judge independently of political currents and pressure. The three branches of government must act independently to serve as counterparts to one another. They are each other’s “checks and balances”, and this does not only apply at this higher level. The three branches of government are represented in countless small and large pockets in the state government. In Norway, for example, the Social Security Court (Trygderetten) serves as an appeal body for decisions in certain social services. But while this is easy to claim as an ideal, it is more challenging to implement in practice. In all constitutional states, compromises, gray areas and dual roles abound, especially further down in the state administration. Authoritarian forces have proven good at exploiting the inherently unclear boundaries.
Levitsky and Ziblatt highlight how authoritarians must be able to “tame” their controllers. Essentially, they can buy, threaten, or eliminate them, and there are many examples to illustrate this. They focus on using «intimidation” against judges, government officials, and opponents. Intimidation can range from threats of punishment and blackmail to subtler methods like covert threats. It’s common for autocrats to prosecute potential rivals, but doing so often requires already controlling the legal system and ensuring it serves their interests. The same applies to tax authorities. They might also pursue defamation lawsuits or similar claims, or resort to more old-fashioned blackmail—often disguised as legal maneuvers, such as «courtpacking,» where they exploit loopholes in the system. Today’s autocrats are most associated with this last approach.
The example they focus on most is the appointment of judges to the Supreme Court. There are notable differences between the system in the United States and in Norway. In the United States, it is the sitting president who appoints new judges when a vacancy arises. It is traditionally understood that the president nominates a candidate who is known to be aligned with his party on various issues. The appointments are therefore political, but they must be approved by the Senate, which then acts as a check. It has been customary for the Senate to accept the president’s nominee, while the president generally avoids proposing candidates with extreme political views.
In Norway, the government (“the King”) appoints Supreme Court judges. They do this regularly based on the advice of the “Nominating Council.” The Nominating Council evaluates applicants based on qualifications rather than political ties. These appointments aren’t entirely free of political influence, and some people in Norway complain that they tend to favor lawyers who are “loyal to the state” (not challenging the state, perhaps reflecting a view that “rights” are not the main concern). First, these are different from purely party-driven appointments, though they may have a political aspect. More importantly, this process aims to select the best, most prominent legal professionals. As a result, the courts are less likely to be viewed as political entities, and voters can trust that they will make fair, sound decisions. Overall, Norwegians can have greater confidence in their Supreme Court. They are expected to serve as a stronger safeguard against authoritarianism than the U.S. Supreme Court.
2. The significance of informal norms
Up until now, the presentation has centered around the formal regulations of democracy and the rule of law. The authors provide a thorough introduction to the reasons why formal regulations can never be sufficient; however, they concentrate on two norms that are not, and perhaps cannot be, embodied in manifest rules: mutual tolerance and institutional “forbearance.” First, they will be presented separately.
2.1 Mutual tolerance
Politics is a peaceful contest for the right to govern a country. This is not something Levitsky and Ziblatt invented; it is a common belief. David Runciman emphasizes that politics is the opposite of violence in his introductory book on the subject. However, politics is more than refraining from using weapons. It requires tolerating the other. Levitsky and Ziblatt write:
Mutual toleration refers to the idea that as long as our rivals play by constitutional rules, we accept that they have an equal right to exist, compete for power, and govern. We may disagree with, and even strongly dislike, our rivals, but we nevertheless accept them as legitimate. This means recognizing that our political rivals are decent, patriotic, law-abiding citizens — that they love our country and respect the Constitution just as we do. It means that even if we believe our opponents’ ideas to be foolish or wrong – headed, we do not view them as an existential threat. Nor do we treat them as treasonous, subversive, or otherwise beyond the pale. We may shed tears on election night when the other side wins, but we do not consider such an event apocalyptic. Put another way, mutual toleration is politicians’ collective willingness to agree to disagree (page 102).
There is much more to say about this norm, and I will return to it later, but as mentioned, it is a difficult point to legislate. This norm is also highly vulnerable. The authors further note that in nearly every case of democratic collapse they have studied, would-be autocrats – from Franco, Hitler, and Mussolini in interwar Europe to Marcos, Castro, and Pinochet during the Cold War, and more recently, Putin, Chávez, and Erdoğan – have justified their power grabs by branding their opponents as an existential threat.
2.2 institutional forbearance
Institutional restraint is translated from the English expression “forbearance.” It means something like patient self-control and tolerance or refraining from exercising a legal right.
A second norm critical to democracy’s survival is what we call institutional forbearance. Forbearance means “patient self-control; restraint and tolerance”, or “the action of restraining from exercising a legal right. ”For our purposes, institutional forbearance can be thought of as avoiding actions that, while respecting the letter of the law, obviously violate its spirit. Where norms of forbearance are strong, politicians do not use their institutional prerogatives to the hilt, even if it is technically legal to do so, for such action could imperil the existing system (page 106).
The first examples they use are the British royal family, which has no formal requirement to ask the largest party after an election to form a government. The king in reality has unlimited authority to choose whomever he/she prefers. Since the book is based on the United States, it is relevant to recall the example of the «filibuster» that they use. The filibuster is a system by which one can delay the processing of decisions in the United States Congress. The opposition has the opportunity to postpone and make it difficult for the majority to make decisions, but this opportunity has been customary not to use. The same applies to the opportunity not to approve budgets and the reluctance to pardon convicted criminals. The reluctance is informally enshrined.
Another example is that in the United States, there was no rule about how many terms a president could serve. The unwritten rule that a maximum of two terms was still respected. We should add that in Norway, we have had an unwritten rule that the Supreme Court can review decisions in the Storting. But perhaps even more relevant, this restraint means that one refrains from using criminal law measures against political opponents. When in a position—sitting in the presidency or the prime minister’s office, as we do in Norway—one leads the administration and the police. One should set guidelines for how they should carry out their tasks; that is what leadership is. But one should not use punishment or other administrative bodies, such as the tax authorities, to harass opponents. In Norway, we have a strong norm—I’m not sure at this stage whether this is formally written down—that political leadership does not interfere in individual cases. If a person is charged with a murder with presumed political dimensions—there is a current case in Oslo in late summer 2025—it is unheard of in a Norwegian context to comment on the case or to assume that the suspected perpetrator is guilty before the verdict is handed down. At the same time, Trump has directly intervened and demanded that the Attorney General file criminal charges against a specific former official.
Norms of restraint are informal constraints that are especially important in presidential democracies, the authors say.
Unrestrained presidents can pack the Supreme Court or circumvent Congress by ruling via decree . And an unrestrained Congress can block the president’s every move, threaten to throw the country into chaos by refusing to fund the government, or vote to remove the president on dubious grounds. (…) The opposite of forbearance is to exploit one’s institutional prerogatives in an unrestrained way. Legal scholar Mark Tushnet calls this “ constitutional hardball”: playing by the rules but pushing against their bounds and “playing for keeps. ” It is a form of institutional combat aimed at permanently defeating one’s partisan rivals — and not caring whether the democratic game continues (page 108–109).
Democracy is a “game” that must be played repeatedly. That’s why mutual tolerance and institutional restraint are closely connected. Sometimes they strengthen each other.
Politicians are more likely to be forbearing when they accept one another as legitimate rivals, and politicians who do not view their rivals as subversive will be less tempted to resort to norm breaking to keep them out of power. Acts of forbearance — for example, a Republican-controlled Senate approving a Democratic president’s Supreme Court pick — will reinforce each party’s belief that the other side is tolerable, promoting a virtuous circle (page 111).
I would call these “rituals.” Rituals reinforce norms, but also hold the explosive power of breaking them. When you violate the norms of reciprocity, you initiate a vicious cycle.
The erosion of mutual toleration may motivate politicians to deploy their institutional powers as broadly as they can get away with. When parties view one another as mortal enemies, the stakes of political competition heighten dramatically. Losing ceases to be a routine and accepted part of the political process and instead becomes a full-blown catastrophe. When the perceived cost of losing is sufficiently high, politicians will be tempted to abandon forbearance. Acts of constitutional hardball may then in turn further undermine mutual toleration, reinforcing beliefs that our rivals pose a dangerous threat. The result is politics without guardrails — what political theorist Eric Nelson describes as a “cycle of escalating constitutional brinksmanship” (page 111).
What needs explanation isn’t that these norms are broken. We will address that in the next section. What’s hard to understand is how they could develop and operate for as long as they did.
3. The Narrow Birth of Democracy
Democracy’s growth was never guaranteed, not even in the United States. The authors outline a slow, trial-and-error process, which can only be briefly summarized here. First, it took time. In the early days of democracy, major parties gradually viewed each other with suspicion, often calling each other enemies and threats to their survival. Over time, they learned to tolerate one another more. Power was transferred from one to the other several times. It wasn’t perfect, but it worked. Eventually, they learned to trust each other. This was aided by the need to compromise. Politics in daily life brought them together in large and small elected bodies. Ultimately, a culture emerged that helped sustain democracy.
The fragile balance was built on a foundation of oppression. The parties were united in the effort to keep slaves, and eventually former slaves, out. Political reconciliation in the United States happened during an ongoing struggle, at times an actual civil war, over slavery. The pro-slavery side ultimately lost the war, but democracy could persist because the former slaves were kept marginalized and excluded from politics through other means. A non-US reader, might need a reminder that the views on slavery did not follow the same patterns we see in the contemporary political landscape (the republicans were mostly opposed to slavery). The major parties collaborated to prevent what they call the black portion of the population from participating in politics:
America’s democratic norms, then, were born in a context of exclusion. As long as the political community was restricted largely to whites, Democrats and Republicans had much in common. Neither party was likely to view the other as an existential threat. The process of racial inclusion that began after World War II and culminated in the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act would, at long last, fully democratize the United States. But it would also polarize it, posing the greatest challenge to established forms of mutual toleration and forbearance since [then] (page 144).
And in many ways, it’s the same conflict that has resurfaced in our time and caused the collapse. But it didn’t start with Trump, nor did it begin with Senator Newt Gingrich. However, these are important figures in the development of the last few decades, with the ultimate culmination in Trump being elected president of the United States despite all the alarm bells that should have been ringing.
4. The unraveling in USA: it didn’t start with Trump
It didnt start with Newt Gingrich, either, but he left a signicant stamp on political culture. Gingrich was a prominent American politician. He is often associated with the harshening of the debate among the American public. In the early 1990s, he began using strongly negatively charged words to describe Democrats, his political opponents. He characterized them as “pathetic, sick, bizarre.” Regarding what they stood for, he called it “betrayal,” and labeled them anti-national, anti-family, and not least, “traitors.” This marked the start of a “seismic shift” in American political life (page 148). Because after him, everything worsened significantly.
Levitsky and Ziblatt recount a long series of violations of the normative railing in the years after 2000. That year, the Democratic candidate Al Gore lost the election in controversial fashion (it was about a decision in a Republican-dominated court). However, he accepted the defeat, and this created hopes and expectations of some reconciliation. The opposite happened. The younger President George W. Bush promised to be a bridge builder, but “the war only intensified during his term.
The result was that the Democrats started to do the same. The authors mention feeling like a sandbag in the appointment of judges (something they do in the United States). The Republicans expanded their range of norm violations (weakening oversight over the president’s actions, page 153 and notably increasing «gerrymandering,» page 155). One of the most passionate supporters in this fight against political tolerance was Ann Coulter, according to the authors. She published a series of books with the striking titles: Slander, Treason, Godless, Guilty, Demonic, Adios, and America! (page 156). Republicans referred to the Democrats as:
- Traitors
- Unpatriotic
- Sick
- Dangerous
This language did not fade when Barack Obama ran for the Democratic nomination. He was “black,” but he couldn’t be seen as such directly. Instead, he was portrayed as a threat to the United States, he was not a “real American,” and many questioned whether he was born in the United States (a requirement to become president), the authors say.
They highlight three key events during Obama’s presidency that strengthened this trend (of which I mention two). Obama himself claimed the authority to make international agreements on his own (Iran’s nuclear program). This had been informally understood to have broad support within political circles (similar to Norwegian conditions).
Another issue at the end of the presidency involved the appointment of a Supreme Court justice. Trump had been elected but had not yet taken office when a vacancy arose (a Republican-appointed judge died suddenly). The Republicans managed to delay the inauguration of a new judge. It was argued that this should only happen with the incoming president. The argument was reasonable on its own, but it went against tradition. They thus “stole” a seat on the Supreme Court. The price they paid was just another round of political erosion.
A new order marked by mutual hostility had emerged. The new media gradually adopted an uncompromising tone. Additionally, they took a hard stance against those in their own ranks who strayed from the new line. The “tough” candidates also received support from wealthy sources.
When Donald Trump took office in January 2017 , the guardrails were still there , but they were weaker than they had been in a century — and things were about to get worse (page 175).
There were other factors that contributed to what we now call the polarization of American political discourse, but what we have seen since the early 1990s is a gradual dismantling of the normative railing, as Levitsky and Ziblatt describe.
Anyone interested in a deeper understanding of these authors’ reasoning should almost certainly seek out the book themselves. They include many examples from other countries that are both enlightening and place the topic within a global context that I cannot fully do justice to. It also features several chapters I have not included here, including two on Trump’s first year in office. At the time of writing, his presidency has escalated the dismantling of democracy and the rule of law so significantly that this chapter now seems completely outdated. The most obvious example is Trump’s refusal to accept his 2020 election loss and his encouragement of people to storm Congress on January 6, 2021.
5. What can be taken from the death of democracies?
Levitsky and Ziblatt published their book in early 2018. Much has happened since then, but the beginning of the second presidential term has shown that the warnings were more than justified. This is not the occasion to go into detail. The purpose here has been to highlight the analytical moves the authors made.
Citizens should be aware of four types of political statements and behaviors, say Levitsky and Ziblatt.
- Rejection, or weak support for democratic rules of the game
- Rejection of the opponent’s political legitimacy
- Tolerance for or encouragement of violence
- Willingness to limit opponents’ civil liberties.
In the case of Trump, these have proven to be accurate indications that his party aims to dismantle democratic institutions. The authors demonstrate that statements like this violate both written and unwritten norms in democracies, but they especially emphasize those that are not codified. They argue that the weakening of democracy started with a disregard for the norms of tolerance and restraint. Today, both parties are less guided by these norms, but this shift can be clearly traced back to changes in Republican strategies around 1990.
They also say that democracy and the rule of law are more than just a constitutional order or written rules. Democracy requires that those in power also refrain from abusing it. This creates a space for politicians where they have the formal chance to do things they shouldn’t be allowed to do informally. Anyone can claim to have the law on their side while they weaken or even undermine democracy. Each of these actions might seem believable. But, as the authors note, democracies are built gradually, with each small step seeming harmless on its own. It’s the accumulation of these steps that has brought the world’s greatest military power to where it is today.