Review
“Levitsky and Ziblatt show how democracies have collapsed elsewhere—not just through violent coups, but more commonly (and insidiously) through a gradual slide into authoritarianism…. How Democracies Die is a lucid and essential guide to what can happen here.”—The New York Times
“If you want to understand what’s happening to our country, the book you really need to read is How Democracies Die.”—Paul Krugman
“Fair warning: reading Levitsky and Ziblatt will leave you very, very unsettled. They make a powerful case that we really and truly are in uncharted territory, living in a moment when the line between difficult times and dark times has blurred.”—Washington Monthly
“Carefully researched and persuasive… the authors show the fragility of even the best democracies and also caution politicians… who think they can somehow co-opt autocrats without getting burned…. How Democracies Die provides a guide for Americans of all political persuasions for what to avoid.”—USA Today
“Scholarly and readable, alarming and level-headed… the greatest of the many merits of Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt’s contribution to what will doubtless be the ballooning discipline of democracy death studies is their rejection of western exceptionalism. There are no vaccines in American (or, I would add, British) culture that protects us: just ways of doing business that now feel decrepit.”—The Guardian
“[An] important new book.”—Nicholas Kristof, The New York Times
“The political-science text in vogue this winter is How Democracies Die.”—The New Yorker
“How Democracies Die studies the modern history of apparently healthy democracies that have slid into autocracy. It is hard to read this fine book without coming away terribly concerned about the possibility Trump might inflict a mortal wound on the health of the republic…. It is simplistic to expect boots marching in the streets, but there will be a battle for democracy.”—Jonathan Chait, New York magazine
“The great strength of Levitsky and Ziblatt’s How Democracies Die is that it rejects the exceptionalist account of US democracy. Their lens is comparative. The authors say America is not immune to the trends that have led to democracy’s collapse in other parts of the world.”—Financial Times
“A powerful wake-up call.”—Foreign Affairs
“The big advantage of political scientists over even the shrewdest and luckiest of eavesdropping journalists is that they have the training to give us a bigger picture…. [Levitsky and Ziblatt] bring to bear useful global and historical context… [showing] the mistakes democratic politicians make as they let dangerous demagogues into the heart of power.”
—The Sunday Times
About the Author
Product details
- ISBN-13: 9780241381359
- Publisher: Penguin
- Published Date: January 2019
- Pages: 320
- Binding: Paperback
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