44 pages • 1 hour read
Daniel Ziblatt, Steven LevitskyHow Democracies Die
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2018A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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BetaSymbols & Motifs
Twitter appears in the book as both a vehicle for norm-breaking speech by the would-be autocrat most profiled in the book, Donald Trump, and as an example of one of the forces that has enabled Trump’s rise: the ascendance of new forms of media.
The authors include examples of tweets where Trump attacked media, political rivals like Hillary Clinton, and members of the judiciary. The broad audience Trump can reach on this platform amplifies the norm-breaking potential of this sort of speech, as a broad swath of the population is then inured to the idea that it is acceptable for an elected leader in the United States to demonize rivals, encourage violence, and question the validity of elections. The authors’ focus on Twitter shows how “mere words”—in this case, Trump’s tweets—act to undermine the stability of democracy.
While American democracy has faced the threat of would-be autocrats before, it has successfully resisted them, thanks in part to the invisible primary and party gatekeepers. But Trump surmounted these obstacles, thanks partly to the changing media landscape of the 21st century. Twitter is an important representation of these changes, and it’s part of the rise in social media that’s enabled figures like Trump to bypass gatekeepers in political parties and the media. Additionally, social media platforms like Twitter both reflect and foster the kind of polarization that helped Trump win the election, making Twitter a symbol of the polarization that threatens democracies.
Sports
Democracy, the authors write, depends on unwritten rules. It this way it closely resembles a game of pick-up basketball. The authors use an informal sports match to describe how democracy functions and how it’s undermined. Pick-up basketball depends on a set of rules that, while unwritten, are known to everyone. In a similar way, democracy functions thanks to the structure provided by two unwritten rules in particular: mutual toleration and institutional forbearance. The pick-up basketball game symbol explains how democracy is part of a social contract and a shared project as much as it is a set of laws.
This symbol also explains why politicians might abide by norms, even when doing so is to their political disadvantage: If players want a game to continue, they have to respect the rules. But when leaders have no interest in the game—or democracy—continuing to function, the whole system is in trouble.
The motif of sports also applies to the discussion of referees. Like any system with opposing sides—such as soccer—democracy depends on independent adjudicators to function. But like corrupt referees in a soccer match, democratic referees can be captured, to be used as a shield for authoritarians or as a weapon against their enemies. On a superficial level, however, referees continue to preside over the match; therefore, the sports motif, including the discussion of referees, helps elucidate how authoritarian leaders marginalize or eliminate the opposition while maintaining a guise of legality and normalcy.
The Constitution
Faith in the Constitution is a metaphor for the faith Americans have in their democracy in general, but just as the Constitution is shared with other countries that have experienced democratic breakdown, so too is America vulnerable to democratic unraveling. Many countries that descended into authoritarianism had constitutions that were directly inspired by the US document, as was the case with Argentina’s 1853 Constitution. By drawing attention to these parallels, the authors highlight the gaps and omissions not only in constitutions but also in democracy itself, if not consistently maintained by its participants.
The motif of the Constitution also throws the role of unwritten rules into stark relief; by discussing the Constitution, the authors show all that it can’t do and how this makes American democracy vulnerable. This goes back to the founding of the republic and the creation of the Constitution; the creation of the world’s first presidential system, via the Constitution, also brought into being a political system that was inherently vulnerable to populist demagogues. While this helps explain how certain elements of the American system came about, such as the Electoral College, it also explains the rise of unwritten rules, such as mutual toleration and institutional forbearance, and how deeply embedded they are in the American political story. Without these unwritten rules, the written Constitution would not have led to a strong, stable political system. By tracing it back to its creation, the Constitution motif allows the authors to draw on examples from America’s history, as well as that of other countries, to show the invisible forces that make democracy work.
This motif also points to the authors’ suggestion for securing America’s democratic future. The authors point out that democratic erosion often happens without citizens realizing; in a similar way, the belief many have in the Constitution highlights complacency about the strength of American democracy that makes it vulnerable. But the answer lies not in rewriting the Constitution. Instead, rather than the Constitution making the United States exceptional, it is strengthening democracy’s unwritten rules so that they apply to all citizens that would make it truly unique.
