How Democracies Die

by

Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt

Donald Trump, the central figure in How Democracies Die, was the president of the United States from 2017 to 2021. Writing in the first year of Trump’s presidency, Levitsky and Ziblatt argue that Trump poses an unprecedented threat to American democracy. Namely, they argue that he has no respect for democratic norms, including mutual toleration and institutional forbearance, and he gladly challenges the legitimacy of democracy itself—including the electoral process and the nonviolent transfer of power—if it promises to personally benefit him. In fact, his “clear authoritarian tendencies” were obvious from the beginning of his campaign, and in his first months in office, he immediately started attacking the democratic, administrative, legislative, and judicial checks on his power. For instance, he demanded loyalty from FBI director James Comey and started pushing for more restrictive voting laws that disproportionately target Democratic voters. To help explain the kind of threat Trump poses, Levitsky and Ziblatt compare him to numerous other demagogues throughout history, ranging from authoritarian dictators like Benito Mussolini, Alberto Fujimori, and Hugo Chávez to far-right Americans who never managed to win wide political support, like Henry Ford, Huey Long, and George Wallace. The authors conclude that American politicians from both parties must collaborate to stop Trump’s “profoundly antidemocratic” agenda—and should have banded together long before to prevent him from being elected in the first place.

Donald Trump Quotes in How Democracies Die

The How Democracies Die quotes below are all either spoken by Donald Trump or refer to Donald Trump. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
American Tyranny Theme Icon
).
Introduction Quotes

Is our democracy in danger? It is a question we never thought we’d be asking. We have been colleagues for fifteen years, thinking, writing, and teaching students about failures of democracy in other places and times—Europe’s dark 1930s, Latin America’s repressive 1970s. We have spent years researching new forms of authoritarianism emerging around the globe. For us, how and why democracies die has been an occupational obsession.
But now we find ourselves turning to our own country. Over the past two years, we have watched politicians say and do things that are unprecedented in the United States—but that we recognize as having been the precursors of democratic crisis in other places. We feel dread, as do so many other Americans, even as we try to reassure ourselves that things can’t really be that bad here. After all, even though we know democracies are always fragile, the one in which we live has somehow managed to defy gravity.

Related Characters: Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt (speaker), Donald Trump
Page Number: 1
Explanation and Analysis:

Many Americans are justifiably frightened by what is happening to our country. But protecting our democracy requires more than just fright or outrage. We must be humble and bold. We must learn from other countries to see the warning signs—and recognize the false alarms. We must be aware of the fateful missteps that have wrecked other democracies. And we must see how citizens have risen to meet the great democratic crises of the past, overcoming their own deep-seated divisions to avert breakdown. History doesn’t repeat itself. But it rhymes. The promise of history, and the hope of this book, is that we can find the rhymes before it is too late.

Related Characters: Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt (speaker), Donald Trump
Page Number: 10
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 2 Quotes

In short, Americans have long had an authoritarian streak. It was not unusual for figures such as Coughlin, Long, McCarthy, and Wallace to gain the support of a sizable minority—30 or even 40 percent—of the country. We often tell ourselves that America’s national political culture in some way immunizes us from such appeals, but this requires reading history with rose-colored glasses. The real protection against would-be authoritarians has not been Americans’ firm commitment to democracy but, rather, the gatekeepers—our political parties.

Related Characters: Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt (speaker), Father Charles Coughlin, Huey Long, Joseph McCarthy, Donald Trump, George Wallace
Page Number: 36-37
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 3 Quotes

Collective abdication—the transfer of authority to a leader who threatens democracy—usually flows from one of two sources. The first is the misguided belief that an authoritarian can be controlled or tamed. The second is what sociologist Ivan Ermakoff calls “ideological collusion,” in which the authoritarian’s agenda overlaps sufficiently with that of mainstream politicians that abdication is desirable, or at least preferable to the alternatives. But when faced with a would-be authoritarian, establishment politicians must unambiguously reject him or her and do everything possible to defend democratic institutions—even if that means temporarily joining forces with bitter rivals.

Related Characters: Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt (speaker), Donald Trump
Page Number: 67-68
Explanation and Analysis:

In short, most Republican leaders ended up holding the party line. If they had broken decisively with Trump, telling Americans loudly and clearly that he posed a threat to our country’s cherished institutions, and if, on those grounds, they had endorsed Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump might never have ascended to the presidency. […] We have no way of knowing how Republican voters would have split. Some, perhaps even most, of the base might still have voted for Trump. But enough would have been swayed by the image of both parties uniting to ensure Trump’s defeat.
What happened, tragically, was very different. Despite their hemming and hawing, most Republican leaders closed ranks behind Trump, creating the image of a unified party. That, in turn, normalized the election. Rather than a moment of crisis, the election became a standard two-party race, with Republicans backing the Republican candidate and Democrats backing the Democratic candidate.

Related Characters: Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt (speaker), Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump
Page Number: 70
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7 Quotes

The traditions underpinning America’s democratic institutions are unraveling, opening up a disconcerting gap between how our political system works and long-standing expectations about how it ought to work. As our soft guardrails have weakened, we have grown increasingly vulnerable to antidemocratic leaders.
Donald Trump, a serial norm breaker, is widely (and correctly) criticized for assaulting America’s democratic norms. But the problem did not begin with Trump. The process of norm erosion started decades ago—long before Trump descended an escalator to announce his presidential candidacy.

Related Characters: Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt (speaker), Donald Trump
Related Symbols: Democracy’s Guardrails
Page Number: 146
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 8 Quotes

Efforts to discourage voting are fundamentally antidemocratic, and they have a particularly deplorable history in the United States. Although contemporary voter-restriction efforts are nowhere near as far-reaching as those undertaken by southern Democrats in the late nineteenth century, they are nevertheless significant. Because strict voter ID laws disproportionately affect low-income minority voters, who are overwhelmingly Democratic, they skew elections in favor of the GOP.

Related Characters: Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt (speaker), Donald Trump
Page Number: 186
Explanation and Analysis:

In many ways, President Trump followed the electoral authoritarian script during his first year. He made efforts to capture the referees, sideline the key players who might halt him, and tilt the playing field. But the president has talked more than he has acted, and his most notorious threats have not been realized. […] President Trump repeatedly scraped up against the guardrails, like a reckless driver, but he did not break through them. Despite clear causes for concern, little actual backsliding occurred in 2017. We did not cross the line into authoritarianism.
It is still early, however. The backsliding of democracy is often gradual, its effects unfolding slowly over time. Comparing Trump’s first year in office to those of other would-be authoritarians, the picture is mixed.

Related Characters: Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt (speaker), Donald Trump
Related Symbols: Democracy’s Guardrails
Page Number: 187
Explanation and Analysis:

We fear that if Trump were to confront a war or terrorist attack, he would exploit this crisis fully—using it to attack political opponents and restrict freedoms Americans take for granted. In our view, this scenario represents the greatest danger facing American democracy today.

Related Characters: Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt (speaker), Donald Trump
Page Number: 193
Explanation and Analysis:

Norms are the soft guardrails of democracy; as they break down, the zone of acceptable political behavior expands, giving rise to discourse and action that could imperil democracy. Behavior that was once considered unthinkable in American politics is becoming thinkable. Even if Donald Trump does not break the hard guardrails of our constitutional democracy, he has increased the likelihood that a future president will.

Related Characters: Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt (speaker), Donald Trump
Related Symbols: Democracy’s Guardrails
Page Number: 203
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 9 Quotes

A second, much darker future is one in which President Trump and the Republicans continue to win with a white nationalist appeal. Under this scenario, a pro-Trump GOP would retain the presidency, both houses of Congress, and the vast majority of statehouses, and it would eventually gain a solid majority in the Supreme Court. It would then use the techniques of constitutional hardball to manufacture durable white electoral majorities. This could be done through a combination of large-scale deportation, immigration restrictions, the purging of voter rolls, and the adoption of strict voter ID laws. Measures to reengineer the electorate would likely be accompanied by elimination of the filibuster and other rules that protect Senate minorities, so that Republicans could impose their agenda even with narrow majorities. These measures may appear extreme, but every one of them has been at least contemplated by the Trump administration.

Related Characters: Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt (speaker), Donald Trump
Page Number: 207
Explanation and Analysis:

The third, and in our view, most likely, post-Trump future is one marked by polarization, more departures from unwritten political conventions, and increasing institutional warfare—in other words, democracy without solid guardrails.

Related Characters: Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt (speaker), Donald Trump
Related Symbols: Democracy’s Guardrails
Page Number: 208
Explanation and Analysis:

Opposition to the Trump administration’s authoritarian behavior should be muscular, but it should seek to preserve, rather than violate, democratic rules and norms. Where possible, opposition should center on Congress, the courts, and, of course, elections. If Trump is defeated via democratic institutions, it will strengthen those institutions.

Related Characters: Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt (speaker), Donald Trump
Page Number: 217-218
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire How Democracies Die LitChart as a printable PDF.
How Democracies Die PDF

Donald Trump Quotes in How Democracies Die

The How Democracies Die quotes below are all either spoken by Donald Trump or refer to Donald Trump. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
American Tyranny Theme Icon
).
Introduction Quotes

Is our democracy in danger? It is a question we never thought we’d be asking. We have been colleagues for fifteen years, thinking, writing, and teaching students about failures of democracy in other places and times—Europe’s dark 1930s, Latin America’s repressive 1970s. We have spent years researching new forms of authoritarianism emerging around the globe. For us, how and why democracies die has been an occupational obsession.
But now we find ourselves turning to our own country. Over the past two years, we have watched politicians say and do things that are unprecedented in the United States—but that we recognize as having been the precursors of democratic crisis in other places. We feel dread, as do so many other Americans, even as we try to reassure ourselves that things can’t really be that bad here. After all, even though we know democracies are always fragile, the one in which we live has somehow managed to defy gravity.

Related Characters: Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt (speaker), Donald Trump
Page Number: 1
Explanation and Analysis:

Many Americans are justifiably frightened by what is happening to our country. But protecting our democracy requires more than just fright or outrage. We must be humble and bold. We must learn from other countries to see the warning signs—and recognize the false alarms. We must be aware of the fateful missteps that have wrecked other democracies. And we must see how citizens have risen to meet the great democratic crises of the past, overcoming their own deep-seated divisions to avert breakdown. History doesn’t repeat itself. But it rhymes. The promise of history, and the hope of this book, is that we can find the rhymes before it is too late.

Related Characters: Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt (speaker), Donald Trump
Page Number: 10
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 2 Quotes

In short, Americans have long had an authoritarian streak. It was not unusual for figures such as Coughlin, Long, McCarthy, and Wallace to gain the support of a sizable minority—30 or even 40 percent—of the country. We often tell ourselves that America’s national political culture in some way immunizes us from such appeals, but this requires reading history with rose-colored glasses. The real protection against would-be authoritarians has not been Americans’ firm commitment to democracy but, rather, the gatekeepers—our political parties.

Related Characters: Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt (speaker), Father Charles Coughlin, Huey Long, Joseph McCarthy, Donald Trump, George Wallace
Page Number: 36-37
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 3 Quotes

Collective abdication—the transfer of authority to a leader who threatens democracy—usually flows from one of two sources. The first is the misguided belief that an authoritarian can be controlled or tamed. The second is what sociologist Ivan Ermakoff calls “ideological collusion,” in which the authoritarian’s agenda overlaps sufficiently with that of mainstream politicians that abdication is desirable, or at least preferable to the alternatives. But when faced with a would-be authoritarian, establishment politicians must unambiguously reject him or her and do everything possible to defend democratic institutions—even if that means temporarily joining forces with bitter rivals.

Related Characters: Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt (speaker), Donald Trump
Page Number: 67-68
Explanation and Analysis:

In short, most Republican leaders ended up holding the party line. If they had broken decisively with Trump, telling Americans loudly and clearly that he posed a threat to our country’s cherished institutions, and if, on those grounds, they had endorsed Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump might never have ascended to the presidency. […] We have no way of knowing how Republican voters would have split. Some, perhaps even most, of the base might still have voted for Trump. But enough would have been swayed by the image of both parties uniting to ensure Trump’s defeat.
What happened, tragically, was very different. Despite their hemming and hawing, most Republican leaders closed ranks behind Trump, creating the image of a unified party. That, in turn, normalized the election. Rather than a moment of crisis, the election became a standard two-party race, with Republicans backing the Republican candidate and Democrats backing the Democratic candidate.

Related Characters: Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt (speaker), Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump
Page Number: 70
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7 Quotes

The traditions underpinning America’s democratic institutions are unraveling, opening up a disconcerting gap between how our political system works and long-standing expectations about how it ought to work. As our soft guardrails have weakened, we have grown increasingly vulnerable to antidemocratic leaders.
Donald Trump, a serial norm breaker, is widely (and correctly) criticized for assaulting America’s democratic norms. But the problem did not begin with Trump. The process of norm erosion started decades ago—long before Trump descended an escalator to announce his presidential candidacy.

Related Characters: Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt (speaker), Donald Trump
Related Symbols: Democracy’s Guardrails
Page Number: 146
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 8 Quotes

Efforts to discourage voting are fundamentally antidemocratic, and they have a particularly deplorable history in the United States. Although contemporary voter-restriction efforts are nowhere near as far-reaching as those undertaken by southern Democrats in the late nineteenth century, they are nevertheless significant. Because strict voter ID laws disproportionately affect low-income minority voters, who are overwhelmingly Democratic, they skew elections in favor of the GOP.

Related Characters: Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt (speaker), Donald Trump
Page Number: 186
Explanation and Analysis:

In many ways, President Trump followed the electoral authoritarian script during his first year. He made efforts to capture the referees, sideline the key players who might halt him, and tilt the playing field. But the president has talked more than he has acted, and his most notorious threats have not been realized. […] President Trump repeatedly scraped up against the guardrails, like a reckless driver, but he did not break through them. Despite clear causes for concern, little actual backsliding occurred in 2017. We did not cross the line into authoritarianism.
It is still early, however. The backsliding of democracy is often gradual, its effects unfolding slowly over time. Comparing Trump’s first year in office to those of other would-be authoritarians, the picture is mixed.

Related Characters: Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt (speaker), Donald Trump
Related Symbols: Democracy’s Guardrails
Page Number: 187
Explanation and Analysis:

We fear that if Trump were to confront a war or terrorist attack, he would exploit this crisis fully—using it to attack political opponents and restrict freedoms Americans take for granted. In our view, this scenario represents the greatest danger facing American democracy today.

Related Characters: Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt (speaker), Donald Trump
Page Number: 193
Explanation and Analysis:

Norms are the soft guardrails of democracy; as they break down, the zone of acceptable political behavior expands, giving rise to discourse and action that could imperil democracy. Behavior that was once considered unthinkable in American politics is becoming thinkable. Even if Donald Trump does not break the hard guardrails of our constitutional democracy, he has increased the likelihood that a future president will.

Related Characters: Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt (speaker), Donald Trump
Related Symbols: Democracy’s Guardrails
Page Number: 203
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 9 Quotes

A second, much darker future is one in which President Trump and the Republicans continue to win with a white nationalist appeal. Under this scenario, a pro-Trump GOP would retain the presidency, both houses of Congress, and the vast majority of statehouses, and it would eventually gain a solid majority in the Supreme Court. It would then use the techniques of constitutional hardball to manufacture durable white electoral majorities. This could be done through a combination of large-scale deportation, immigration restrictions, the purging of voter rolls, and the adoption of strict voter ID laws. Measures to reengineer the electorate would likely be accompanied by elimination of the filibuster and other rules that protect Senate minorities, so that Republicans could impose their agenda even with narrow majorities. These measures may appear extreme, but every one of them has been at least contemplated by the Trump administration.

Related Characters: Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt (speaker), Donald Trump
Page Number: 207
Explanation and Analysis:

The third, and in our view, most likely, post-Trump future is one marked by polarization, more departures from unwritten political conventions, and increasing institutional warfare—in other words, democracy without solid guardrails.

Related Characters: Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt (speaker), Donald Trump
Related Symbols: Democracy’s Guardrails
Page Number: 208
Explanation and Analysis:

Opposition to the Trump administration’s authoritarian behavior should be muscular, but it should seek to preserve, rather than violate, democratic rules and norms. Where possible, opposition should center on Congress, the courts, and, of course, elections. If Trump is defeated via democratic institutions, it will strengthen those institutions.

Related Characters: Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt (speaker), Donald Trump
Page Number: 217-218
Explanation and Analysis: