How Democracies Die

At the outset of Chapter 5, Levitsky and Ziblatt argue that the US Constitution, despite having historically served as a successful check on the consolidation of power, is not an inherently effective tool for protecting democracy.

Other nations, such as early 20th-century Germany and the republics of postcolonial Latin America, also had constitutions; in the case of the latter, these documents were largely lifted from the US Constitution. Yet these documents did not prevent these countries from becoming autocratic. The issue is that constitutions are incomplete and open to interpretation—including that of the United States. Levitsky and Ziblatt write, “Because of the gaps and ambiguities inherent in all legal systems, we cannot rely on constitutions alone to safeguard democracy against would-be authoritarians” (99).

Instead of the written rules of the Constitution alone securing democracy, the authors suggest that unwritten rules have been vital. These norms—“shared codes of conduct that become common knowledge within a particular community or society”—ensure that political systems function (101). Particularly important among these are “mutual toleration and institutional forbearance” (102).

Mutual toleration is the acceptance of opponents as legitimate political rivals with a basic right to exist. The development of this rule is critical to American democracy, Levitsky and Ziblatt say, but this wasn’t always the case; in the early days of the American project, political opponents demonized and persecuted one another. In other countries where the norm was weak, such as Spain in the 1930s, the lack of mutual toleration undermined the foundations of democracy, leading to civil war.

Institutional forbearance refers to the idea that politicians refrain from doing whatever is legally within their power to avoid threatening the viability of the whole political system. In a democracy, this can look like America’s two-term presidential limits, which until 1951 were a norm rather than a constitutional rule. On the other side of the spectrum, politicians may violate this norm by playing by the rules but testing their limits, regardless of the consequences for democracy, as happened in Ecuador in the 1990s, when congress voted to impeach populist President Abdalá Bucaram on grounds of “mental incapacity” despite never even debating his capacity.

These norms reinforce one another, the authors say, since politicians who tolerate rivals are less likely to violate norms as a means of maintaining control. The opposite is also true: When opponents are enough of a threat, politicians will do whatever they can to keep them out of power. An example of this is Chile in the 1970s, when the breakdown of mutual toleration in Chile’s once-strong democracy drove President Salvador Allende to exploit more of his executive power and erode democratic norms. In the end, intense polarization undermined the legitimacy of Allende’s government, leading to dictatorship.

The authors use a simple analogy to further emphasize their point. Pick-up basketball is a game governed by unwritten rules, which all players are aware of and abide by. When these norms are broken, the game falls apart. Pick-up basketball games only work because the participants agree to play, not to fight. Government norms function in much the same way, though “in politics, this often means eschewing dirty tricks or hardball tactics in the name of fair play” (107).

Levitsky and Ziblatt open Chapter 6 with an anecdote of a time a norm safeguarded American democracy. In the 1930s the Supreme Court repeatedly blocked parts of President Roosevelt’s New Deal. In response, Roosevelt planned to use a gap in the Constitution to add more justices, which would have violated the norm of institutional forbearance (and specifically, of the independence of coequal branches of government). The proposal was killed by widespread opposition, including from Roosevelt’s own party.

The authors then explore the powers available to politicians that institutional forbearance has largely kept in check. The first of these is presidential power, the limits of which are not clearly defined in the Constitution. A variety of tools allow presidents to take unilateral action without congressional approval, or to dodge judicial control, but presidents have largely opted not to violate norms by using the full range of powers available to them. Similarly, norms ensure the relatively smooth functioning of bodies like the Senate, where individual action, through tools like the filibuster, could otherwise result in gridlock. These “norms of reciprocity entailed restraining in the use of one’s power so as not to overly antagonize other senators and endanger future cooperation” (134). As proof of how strong this norm was, the authors note that filibusters were rarely used until the late 1960s. Norms also limit how often the Senate blocks presidential appointments, even though it has the power to do so. Finally, the fact that impeachment has been attempted only a handful of times in the United States shows the strength of forbearance, since the legal hurdles to doing so are relatively low.

The authors next point out three instances when norms were severely tested in American democracy. The first was during Roosevelt’s presidency, when he issued an unprecedented number of executive orders, sought a third and fourth term in office, and attempted to pack the Supreme Court but was blocked by bipartisan resistance. Second, following World War II Republicans capitalized on the anticommunist hysteria drummed up by Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy to demonize Democrats and erode mutual toleration, but such divisive practices fell out of favor until the late 20th century. Finally, Richard Nixon violated norms by surveilling journalists, activists, and Democrats, and using the Internal Revenue Service to harass opponents, but he was investigated and forced to resign by a bipartisan coalition of senators.

The authors close the chapter by noting the troubling fact that these norms were able to facilitate cooperation because of the exclusion of racial minorities that started after the Civil War and limited civil rights. When the United States was fully democratized in the 1960s, these norms started to face serious challenges.