How Democracies Die

  Acknowledgments

  We could not possibly have written this book without the collaboration of a group of extraordinary student research assistants. We are deeply grateful to Fernando Bizzarro, Kaitlyn Chriswell, Jasmine Hakimian, David Ifkovits, Shiro Kuriwaki, Martin Liby Troein, Manuel Meléndez, Brian Palmiter, Justin Pottle, Matt Reichert, Briita van Staalduinen, Aaron Watanabe, and Selena Zhao. Special thanks to David Ifkovits and Justin Pottle for their impeccable work on the blind notes. The fruits of these students’ research pervade this entire book. We hope they see themselves in it.

  The ideas in this book emerged from numerous conversations with friends and colleagues. We especially thank Daniel Carpenter, Ryan Enos, Gretchen Helmke, Alisha Holland, Daniel Hopkins, Jeff Kopstein, Evan Lieberman, Robert Mickey, Eric Nelson, Paul Pierson, Pia Raffler, Kenneth Roberts, Theda Skocpol, Dan Slater, Todd Washburn, and Lucan Ahmad Way for their willingness to listen to, debate, and teach us. Special thanks to Larry Diamond, Scott Mainwaring, Tarek Masoud, John Sides, and Lucan Ahmad Way for reading earlier drafts of the manuscript.

  We are indebted to our agent, Jill Kneerim, for many things. Jill invented this book project and guided us through it from start to finish. She has been a source of much-needed encouragement and wise advice—and great editing to boot.

  We thank our editor at Crown Publishers, Amanda Cook, for her faith in us, as well as for her patience and perseverance in coaxing a readable book out of a couple of political scientists. We are also thankful to Crown’s Meghan Houser, Zach Phillips, Kathleen Quinlan, and Penny Simon for their hard work and patient support, as well as Molly Stern for the great energy she brought to the project.

  Steve thanks the members of the Soccer Dads Club (Chris, Jonathan, and Todd) for their constant good humor and support (and, of course, their insights into politics).

  Finally, we are deeply grateful to our families. Steve thanks Liz Mineo and Alejandra Mineo-Levitsky, the two people who matter most. Daniel thanks Suriya, Talia, and Lilah Ziblatt for their unending enthusiasm and patience. And Daniel also thanks his father, David Ziblatt, for conversation, insight, intellectual companionship, and enduring inspiration.

  Endnotes

  INTRODUCTION

  in barely visible steps: Constitutional scholars Aziz Huq and Tom Ginsburg call this form of democratic breakdown “constitutional regression.” See Aziz Huq and Tom Ginsburg, “How to Lose a Constitutional Democracy,” UCLA Law Review 65 (2018); also Ellen Lust and David Waldner, Unwelcome Change: Understanding, Evaluating, and Extending Theories of Democratic Backsliding (Washington, DC: U.S. Agency for International Development, 2015).

  “the only antibiotic we have”: Bart Jones, Hugo!: The Hugo Chávez Story from Mud Hut to Perpetual Revolution (Hanover, NH: Steerforth Press, 2007), p. 225.

  Blatant dictatorship: Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way, Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes After the Cold War (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010); also Scott Mainwaring and Aníbal Pérez-Liñán, Democracies and Dictatorships in Latin America: Emergence, Survival, and Fall (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014).

  by elected governments themselves: Huq and Ginsburg, “How to Lose a Constitutional Democracy,” p. 36.

  Many continue to believe: Latinobarómetro, accessed March 16, 2017, http://www.latinobarometro.org/​latOnline.jsp (Question: Democracy -> Scale [country] is democratic).

  have fueled an insidious reaction: Robert Mickey, Steven Levitsky, and Lucan Ahmad Way, “Is America Still Safe for Democracy?,” Foreign Affairs, May/June 2017, pp. 20–29.

  CHAPTER 1: FATEFUL ALLIANCES

  Benito Mussolini arrived in Rome: Simonetta Falasca-Zamponi, Fascist Spectacle: The Aesthetics of Power in Mussolini’s Italy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), p. 1.

  “I come from the battlefield”: Robert Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism (New York: Vintage, 2004), p. 90.

  At the last train stop: Falasca-Zamponi, Fascist Spectacle, p. 2.

  a new fascist epoch: Ibid.

  “We’ve engaged him for ourselves”: Quoted in Richard Evans, The Coming of the Third Reich (New York: Penguin, 2003), p. 308.

  “fateful alliance”: Hermann Beck, The Fateful Alliance: German Conservatives and Nazis in 1933: The Machtergreifung in a New Light (New York: Berghahn Press, 2011). Also see Daniel Ziblatt, Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017).

  “bourgeois bloc”: Alexander De Grand, The Hunchback’s Tailor: Giovanni Giolitti and Liberal Italy from the Challenge of Mass Politics to the Rise of Fascism (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2001), pp. 241–42.

  “It is difficult to ask”: Taken from Cristina Marcano and Alberto Barrera Tyszka, Hugo Chávez (New York: Random House, 2004), p. 304.

  Caldera’s departure and subsequent antiestablishment campaign: See José E. Molina, “The Unraveling of Venezuela’s Party System,” in The Unraveling of Representative Democracy in Venezuela, eds. Jennifer L. McCoy and David J. Myers (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), p. 162.

  “To power”: Quoted in Jones, Hugo!, p. 186.

  he viewed Chávez as a passing fad: Ibid., p. 189.

  in dropping all charges: Marcano and Barrera Tyszka, Hugo Chávez, p. 107.

  he stood glumly: Jones, Hugo!, p. 226.

  “Nobody thought that Mr. Chávez”: Quoted in Marcano and Barrera Tyszka, Hugo Chávez, p. 107.

  “I have just committed”: Quoted in Larry Eugene Jones, “ ‘The Greatest Stupidity of My Life’: Alfred Hugenberg and the Formation of the Hitler Cabinet, January 1933,” Journal of Contemporary History 27, no. 1 (1992), pp. 63–87.

  1998 Latinobarómetro survey: Source: Latinobarómetro, accessed March 16, 2017, http://www.latinobarometro.org/​latOnline.jsp.

  “litmus test”: Juan J. Linz, The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes: Crisis, Breakdown, and Reequilibration (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), pp. 29–30.

  Building on Linz’s work: See ibid., pp. 27–38.

  All five ended up: Steven Levitsky and James Loxton, “Populism and Competitive Authoritarianism in the Andes,” Democratization 20, no. 1 (2013).

  “distancing”: Nancy Bermeo, Ordinary People in Extraordinary Times: The Citizenry and the Breakdown of Democracy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003), p. 238.

  The AVF’s youth group: Ziblatt, Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy, p. 344.

  The loss of 25,000 members: Ibid.

  “greater affinity for extremists”: Linz, The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes, pp. 32–33.

  “join with opponents”: Ibid., p. 37.

  The party leadership took: Giovanni Capoccia, Defending Democracy: Reactions to Extremism in Interwar Europe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005), p. 121.

  created the Catholic Youth Front: Ibid., p. 120.

  The Catholic Party supported: Ibid., p. 121.

  The choice was not easy: Ibid., pp. 122–23.

  when it became evident: Capoccia, Defending Democracy, p. 121.

  the extreme-right Lapua Movement: Risto Alapuro and Erik Allardt, “The Lapua Movement: The Threat of Rightist Takeover in Finland, 1930–32,” in The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes: Europe, eds. Juan J. Linz and Alfred Stepan (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), p. 130.

  The movement sought: Ibid., p. 130.

  At first, politicians from the governing: Bermeo, Ordinary People in Extraordinary Times, p. 240; Alapuro and Allardt, “The Lapua Movement,” pp. 130–31.

  P. E. Svinhufvud, a conservative: Alapuro and Allardt, “The Lapua Movement,” pp. 130–31.

  the Lapua Movement continued: Bermeo, Ordinary People in Extraordinary Times, p. 240.

  Lapua thugs abducted: Alapuro and Allardt, “The Lapua Movement,” p. 130.

  The Lapua Movement also organized: Ibid., p. 133.

  the bulk of the Agrarian Union: Bermeo, Ordinary People in Extraordinary Times, p. 240.

  Even the cons
ervative president: Ibid., p. 241.

  The Lapua Movement was left isolated: Ibid., pp. 239–41.

  “not with passion”: “Bürgerlicher Aufruf für Van der Bellen (Citizens Appeal to Van der Bellen),” Die Presse, May 14, 2016, http://diepresse.com/​home/​innenpolitik/​bpwahl/​4988743/​Buergerlicher-Aufruf-fuer-Van-der-Bellen.

  a decision that split families: Interview with author, March 16, 2017.

  CHAPTER 2: GATEKEEPING IN AMERICA

  extremist groups existed in the United States: Seymour Martin Lipset and Earl Raab, The Politics of Unreason: Right-Wing Extremism in America, 1790–1970 (New York: Harper & Row, 1970), p. 152.

  naming Mussolini its “Man of the Week”: Lipset and Raab, The Politics of Unreason, pp. 170–71.

  “ever to happen to radio”: Quoted in Alan Brinkley, Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin & the Great Depression (New York: Vintage Books, 1983), p. 119.

  He delivered speeches to packed stadiums: Ibid., pp. 83, 175–77.

  lined his route to see him: Ibid., p. 119. As late as 1938, a Gallup poll found that 27 percent of Americans approved of Father Coughlin, while 32 percent disapproved (Lipset and Raab, The Politics of Unreason, pp. 171–73).

  “the great demagogue of the day”: Arthur Schlesinger, The Age of Roosevelt: The Politics of Upheaval, 1935–1936 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, [1960] 2003), pp. viii, 68.

  a gifted stump speaker: Richard D. White Jr., Kingfish: The Reign of Huey P. Long (New York: Random House, 2006), pp. 45, 99, 171; Brinkley, Voices of Protest, p. 69.

  a mix of bribes and threats: Schlesinger, The Age of Roosevelt, p. 62; White, Kingfish, pp. 248–53; William Ivy Hair, The Kingfish and His Realm: The Life and Times of Huey P. Long (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1991), pp. 276–80.

  “I’m the constitution just now”: White, Kingfish, p. 45.

  “the first true dictator”: Quoted in ibid., p. 253.

  Roosevelt’s campaign manager: Ibid., p. 352.

  “more mail than all other senators”: Ibid., p. 198.

  nearly eight million names: Robert E. Snyder, “Huey Long and the Presidential Election of 1936,” Louisiana History 16, no. 2 (Spring 1975), p. 123; White, Kingfish, p. 198.

  a presidential run: Brinkley, Voices of Protest, p. 81; Hair, The Kingfish and His Realm, pp. 306–7.

  “I can take this Roosevelt”: Snyder, “Huey Long and the Presidential Election of 1936,” p. 128.

  Roosevelt viewed Long as a serious threat: Lipset and Raab, The Politics of Unreason, pp. 209, 224.

  Senator Joseph McCarthy: Ibid., p. 21.

  enjoyed 40 percent: Ibid., p. 237.

  “hate the powerful”: Arthur T. Hadley, The Invisible Primary (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1976), p. 238; Jody Carlson, George C. Wallace and the Politics of Powerlessness: The Wallace Campaigns for the Presidency, 1964–1976 (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1981), p. 6.

  “What is a Constitution anyway?”: Lipset and Raab, The Politics of Unreason, pp. 355–56.

  blue-collar base: Dan T. Carter, The Politics of Rage: George Wallace, the Origins of the New Conservatism, and the Transformation of American Politics, Second Edition (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2000), pp. 344–52; Stephan Lesher, George Wallace: American Populist (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1994), pp. 276–78; Lipset and Raab, The Politics of Unreason, pp. 345–57.

  his third-party run: Lipset and Raab, The Politics of Unreason, p. 21.

  assassination attempt: Carlson, George C. Wallace and the Politics of Powerlessness, p. 149.

  “smoke-filled back room”: This account of the 1920 convention relies on two sources: Francis Russell, The Shadow of Blooming Grove: Warren G. Harding in His Times (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1968), pp. 379–81; and John Morello, Selling the President, 1920: Albert D. Lasker, Advertising, and the Election of Warren G. Harding (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2001), pp. 41–43.

  “Nobody is talking Harding”: Russell, The Shadow of Blooming Grove, p. 376.

  In parliamentary democracies: See David Samuels and Matthew Shugart, Presidents, Parties, and Prime Ministers: How the Separation of Powers Affects Party Organization and Behavior (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010).

  “and ending tyrants”: Alexander Hamilton, Federalist 1.

  built-in screening device: James W. Ceaser, Presidential Selection: Theory and Development (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979), p. 64.

  “The immediate election”: Quoted in Robert Dahl, How Democratic Is the American Constitution?, Second Edition (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), p. 76.

  “filtration”: James W. Ceaser, Reforming the Reforms: A Critical Analysis of the Presidential Selection Process (Cambridge, MA: Ballinger Publishing Company, 1982), pp. 84–87.

  They generally followed the instructions: Ibid., pp. 19–21.

  Yet these brought little change: Ibid., p. 23.

  the presidency’s gatekeepers: Ibid., p. 27.

  “peer review”: See, for example, Nelson W. Polsby, Consequences of Party Reform (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), pp. 169–70.

  They had worked with them: Austin Ranney, Testimony Before the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration, September 10, 1980. Quoted in Ceaser, Reforming the Reforms, p. 96.

  praise from racists worldwide: Lipset and Raab, The Politics of Unreason, p. 111.

  mentioned with admiration by Adolf Hitler: For more on the relationship of Henry Ford and the Nazi regime, see Neil Baldwin, Henry Ford and the Jews: The Mass Production of Hatred (New York: Public Affairs, 2002).

  Ford was also a widely admired: See Reynold M. Wik, Henry Ford and Grass-roots America (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1972).

  “poor farm boy who made good”: Ibid., pp. 8–10, 42, 167.

  “Ford Craze”: Ibid., pp. 162, 172–73.

  As the results rolled in: “Ford Leads in Presidential Free-for-All,” Collier’s, May 26, 1923, p. 7; “Politics in Chaos as Ford Vote Grows,” Collier’s, June 23, 1923, p. 8.

  “the issue in American politics”: “Ford First in Final Returns,” Collier’s, July 14, 1923, p. 5.

  “machinery of selection”: Edward Lowry, “Dark Horses and Dim Hopes,” Collier’s, November 10, 1923, p. 12.

  “It is most ridiculous”: Quoted in Wik, Henry Ford and Grass-roots America, p. 162.

  “There might be a war or some crisis”: “If I Were President,” Collier’s, August 4, 1923, p. 29.

  isolated him from his peers: Brinkley, Voices of Protest, pp. 75–77; Hair, The Kingfish and His Realm, pp. 268–69; White, Kingfish, p. 191.

  had little chance of winning: Robert E. Snyder, “Huey Long and the Presidential Election of 1936,” Louisiana History 16, no. 2 (Spring 1975), pp. 131–33.

  Wallace shocked the pundits: Carlson, George C. Wallace and the Politics of Powerlessness, pp. 33–36.

  roughly 40 percent of Americans: Lipset and Raab, The Politics of Unreason, p. 21.

  establishment would never back: Stephen Lesher, George Wallace: American Populist (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1994), pp. 387–88; Carlson, George C. Wallace and the Politics of Powerlessness, p. 71.

  “racial purity”: Lynne Olson, Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America’s Fight over World War II, 1931–1941 (New York: Random House, 2014), pp. 18–20, 72.

  His speeches drew large crowds: A. Scott Berg, Lindbergh (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1998), p. 410.

  “Conventional wisdom”: Olson, Those Angry Days, p. 442.

  Idaho senator William Borah: Berg, Lindbergh, p. 398.

  “God might have withdrawn His blessing”: Quoted in Norman Mailer, Miami and the Siege of Chicago (New York: Random House, 1968), p. 7.

  “party leaders, union bosses, and other insiders”: Marty Cohen, David Karol, Hans Noel, and John Zaller, The Party Decides: Presidential Nominations Before and After Reform (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), p. 1.

  “In the United St
ates”: “A Look Back at the 1968 Democratic Convention,” https://www.youtube.com/​watch?v=aUKzSsVmnpY, accessed May 11, 2017.

  “The cure for the ills of democracy”: Democratic National Committee, Mandate for Reform (Washington, DC, Democratic National Committee, April 1970), p. 14.

  open up the presidential nomination process: Quoted in James W. Ceaser, Presidential Selection: Theory and Development (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979), p. 273.

  “the anti-politics of the street”: Democratic National Committee, Mandate for Reform, p. 49.

  representation of women and minorities: Ceaser, Presidential Selection, p. 237.

  “the most open political process”: Both quotes taken from David E. Price, Bringing Back the Parties (Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly, 1984), pp. 149–50.

  volatile and divisive: In 1972, the Democratic nomination was nearly captured by George Wallace, and the eventual nominee, George McGovern, suffered a landslide defeat at the hands of Richard Nixon. In 1976, the nomination went to Jimmy Carter, a relative outsider, and in 1980, President Carter faced a tough primary challenge from Senator Edward Kennedy.

  “stirring up mass hatreds”: Nelson W. Polsby and Aaron Wildavsky, Presidential Elections (New York: The Free Press, 1968), p. 230.

  Any candidate seeking: Cohen, Karol, Noel, and Zaller, The Party Decides, pp. 175–79.

  “invisible primary”: Arthur Hadley, The Invisible Primary (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1976).

  “actually selected”: Ibid., p. xiii.

  CHAPTER 3: THE GREAT REPUBLICAN ABDICATION

  now also open to true outsiders: By outsiders, we mean candidates who have never previously held elective office or a cabinet post. We count all candidates who either participate in a primary or whose name is placed in contention at the convention. We thank Fernando Bizzarro for his assistance in compiling these data.