November 12, 2024 • 44 mins
Daniel Ziblatt is a historian, expert on democracy, and the author of four books, including How Democracies Die (2018), co-authored with Steven Levitsky, a New York Times best-seller and described by The Economist magazine as “the most important book of the Trump era.” In 2023, he published Tyranny of the Minority, also with Steve Levitsky. The book is an analysis of American democracy in comparative perspective, also a New York Times bestseller.
Steven Levitsky is a professor at Harvard and a Senior Democracy Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. His research focuses on democratization and authoritarianism, political parties, and weak and informal institutions, with a focus on Latin America. He is co-author (with Daniel Ziblatt) of How Democracies Die, which was a New York Times Best-Seller and was published in 30 languages, and Tyranny of the Minority: Why American Democracy Reached the Breaking Point.
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You're listening to the United to Preserve Democracy and the Rule of Law Speaker Series,
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presented by Democracy First.
Join us for a conversation with the authors of How Democracies Die, Harvard professors
Daniel Ziblatt and Stephen Levitsky.
They were interviewed by Alyssa Farragriffin in Philadelphia on October 28th, just before
the 2024 election.
Alyssa is a co-host on The View and was White House Communications Director in Donald Trump's
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first term.
She left the administration following the January 6th insurrection and is a vocal critic
of Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
So I want to start with something that struck me in How Democracies Die, which is you pull
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from historic and then more modern parallels of declines in democratic institutions.
You explore the fragility of democratic systems.
Based on your research, what are some of the parallels you see between historic threats
to democracy and then the more modern ones that we're facing today?
Yeah, thank you.
And thank you for doing this.
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It's really wonderful to be with all of you this evening.
Yeah, you know, so in many ways, American democracy is more resilient than a lot of the
democracies who we've spent our careers studying.
So I've studied Europe, Steve, Latin America.
I've really focused on the interwar years of the period between World War I and World
War II.
So there's many ways in which American democracy looks more resilient.
I think it is.
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But they're still disturbing parallels.
And I think one of the most striking is, you know, in these years between World War I and
World War II, there was rampant political violence.
That is people fighting in the streets, people fighting over power using violent rhetoric.
You have people attacking parliament buildings.
There was one very famous moment in France in 1934 where a bunch of militia members attacked
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the French parliament building, tried to assassinate politicians.
So violence happens from time to time in democracies.
The critical question in the interwar years and I think in the United States today is
how do mainstream politicians respond to that?
And one of the things that really led to the demise of democracy in many countries and
in the center of Europe in this period was when mainstream politicians basically stood
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by the side and didn't condemn it forcefully or often tried to work with those who engage
in violent behavior.
When mainstream politicians, people wearing suits and ties thought that they could kind
of co-op this, use the energy on the extreme right or the extreme left to try to get themselves
into power.
That's when democracy got into trouble.
And I think the thing that we find worrying about the current moment in the United States
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is we see that happening as well too often.
Politicians who mainstream politicians again wearing suits and ties, men and women thinking
that well, we can write this out, we can use this energy to kind of write ourselves to
power.
And the record of history is very clear that that really doesn't end well.
Very interesting.
And I know when I think of that in the context of the post-Trump era, there were many people
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who I don't think themselves are deeply anti-democratic but had opportunities to call out his behavior
and instead chose to normalize it.
Think of Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy if you're wondering.
But one thing you hit on in the book that I think is fascinating is the role institutions
play.
And your research discusses the importance of both formal institutions but then also formal
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institutions but also informal norms in maintaining a stable democracy.
And this was a bit eye-opening to me these sort of handshake agreements that exist that
we just assume or agree to but are not necessarily binding in the way formal institutions are.
What do you see as the most critical political norms under threat today and how can societies
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begin to rebuild those norms when they start to erode?
Okay.
I think the critical norms have shifted and shifted in a not very happy direction.
When we wrote How Democracy is Dying Now six years ago, seven years ago, we focused on
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two norms that we think are critical for the functioning of any democracy.
One is mutual toleration which is accepting the legitimacy of your political rivals.
Not basically not treating your rival as an enemy but rather as someone who is equally
patriotic, loves her, his country as much as we do and has a legitimate right to be
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out there disagreeing with us, competing with us.
Even if they win an election, has a legitimate right to govern us.
If we don't have that basic toleration of our opponents, of our rivals, it's really
hard to sustain a democracy.
The other one a little more complicated is this thing that we call forbearance which
is a willingness not to weaponize institutions.
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Turns out that if you try hard enough, you can weaponize almost any institution.
Even the most well-designed institutions, even the US Constitution, if you work hard
enough, if you try hard enough, you can find loopholes, you can find ways to manipulate
it, you can find ways to use the letter of the law to subvert the spirit of the law.
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A functioning democracy really requires a shared commitment among all politicians not
to go there, not to weaponize institutions, not to use the letter of the law to subvert
its spirit.
That was our concern six years ago.
That's still a concern, but we have even more fundamental norms and I would say rules of
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democracy, basic rules of democracy that are now under threat.
When we wrote How Democracies Die, we didn't spend much time thinking about the cardinal
rule of democracy which is that you've got to accept the results of elections, win or
lose.
We did not think in 2018 that that would be an issue in the United States, that we would
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have to reteach ourselves to accept the results of elections.
We've slid from a point where we're worrying about civility and treating one another with
a minimum of legitimacy to a point where we have to worry that a large number of our
politicians are not willing to accept the results of elections.
The other one which Daniel mentioned is a really critical rule of democracy is you've
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got to always unambiguously, under all circumstances, renounce violence.
Clearly unambiguously renounce political violence.
Not tolerate it, not wink at it, not condone it, not justify it, not use what aboutism,
but denounce it even if it's done on your own side.
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That again, six, seven years ago, that norm seemed to still hold in the United States
and now not so much.
We've got even, unfortunately, even deeper concerns than mutual toleration and forbearance,
the basic rules of democracy are now under threat.
How do you get it back?
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We can dig deeper into this if you want to.
Unfortunately, looking at other cases in history, I'm pretty pessimistic.
Politicians don't relearn these norms until they've lost their democracy, until they've
gone over the cliff.
In Chile, after the military dictatorship, in Spain, after Franco, in Germany, after
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the Nazi period, that's when politicians got it together and rethought how they did politics.
There aren't many cases of politicians or political leaders before they reach the cliff,
stopping and saying, okay, wait, we've got to do something different.
That's a fascinating point to me because as I travel around warning against what a second
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Trump administration would look like, something that I often hear as pushback is that didn't
happen in the first term.
How is it going to be drastically worse or different?
Something I point to that you make this point is there's actually ways that you can use
the existing institutions in a perfectly lawful manner, technically speaking.
One thing I talk about that he learned and didn't understand in his first term is you
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can appoint cabinet secretaries, for example, in acting capacities for 180 days.
They can bypass Senate confirmation.
They don't need that stamp of approval from a bipartisan coalition.
Even to that, I've heard people say you can't get much done.
You can get an incredible amount done in 180 days running a department, for example.
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But I think that's really important.
Something else that you and I were all talking about backstage is America is so unique in
so many ways.
We are a truly multinational democratic nation that I think we haven't truly seen something
that's as multiracial as America in modern history, that's been able to operate as a
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democratic republic and overcome some of these things that we know creep in, nativism, fear
of others, desires for isolation versus how we're going to engage abroad.
How is America unique?
What are actually, frankly, the dangers that come with who we are?
I think you are right that it's pretty unusual for a country, for a previously dominant ethnic
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majority to lose its majority status within a democracy.
The U.S., though, in other respects is not unique in the sense that other democracies
around the world are also becoming more diverse.
So you walk around the streets of Zurich or Amsterdam, they look like the streets of
any American city, incredibly ethnically diverse, due to immigration.
So in many ways we share these challenges and opportunities.
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What is striking is that, as you say, there is a reaction against that for people who
feel like that their way of life, traditional way of life is being challenged.
That's happened throughout American history, I should say.
I mean, we've had other attempts at multiracial democracy in the United States, that's what
the Reconstruction era was all about, in fact.
In the past, we failed that test and in a sense we now have a second broad experiment
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at this and can we make our way through it.
So in terms of what, so we have a longer history of trying to live in a diverse, large, diverse
democracy.
Other democracies face this same opportunity and challenge.
And similarly, there's these radical right movements in Western Europe, political parties
that run on opposition to immigration, opposition to cultural diversity.
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And actually we're quite similar in some respects, around 30% of most West European
electorates vote for radical right anti-immigration parties.
And in some ways it's quite analogous to, I would say, the 35% core of the MAGA movement.
So everywhere this is a challenge.
The question is how do you maintain a democracy in the face of that challenge, in the face
of a political party that wants to undermine political rights to fellow citizens?
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And I think what's been distinctive about the United States is that because we have
a two-party system, a variety of other reasons that we lay out in tyranny of the minority,
that 35% has outsized influence in the United States.
In Western Europe, these political parties tend to be on the margins.
At best they may be able to form a coalition with a mainstream party.
In the United States, we have a situation where this movement has taken charge of one
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of the political parties.
And so, in effect, the good news is that our voters are not so dissimilar from voters
in other countries.
Our citizens are broadly tolerant of democracy, but we have this kind of particular dynamic
because of our party system that we face these serious challenges.
Yeah, that's very well said.
Can you talk a bit about the role that misinformation plays in undermining democracies?
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Have you seen it successfully combated before?
And in this moment we're living in, in the digital age, we're going to see the most
misinformation and disinformation spread in this election that we ever have.
What role do citizens play in encountering it?
So a couple of things.
First of all, misinformation, disinformation is not new.
It's existed since the first U.S. election.
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It's existed across time.
The speed and extent to which it can travel has changed due to technologies.
And this is a real challenge, a serious challenge.
But it's not a new thing.
And although without question, it is especially a really polarized electorate in a heavily
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armed society with elections that are going to be as close as the last couple of elections
have been in the election this year is, it can do a lot of damage.
But there's a really important missing piece that I think we often neglect when we think
about the challenge of misinformation.
And that's the role of elites.
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There's a lot of research that shows that when elites that we respect, if I'm a conservative,
then maybe my religious leaders, maybe the figures on television or radio that I listen
to or Republican politicians, we listen to them.
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We take cues from them.
And so in my view, the biggest problem with misinformation has been the fact that conservative
elites have not spoken the truth to their rank and file, whether it is religious leaders,
Fox News and other media figures or Republican politicians.
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They've either in some cases parroted the misinformation or just hid under their desk
and refused to condemn it.
And Republican politicians had come out and said, no, once we knew the results of the
2020 election, they come out and said, no, Joe Biden won the election, spoken unambiguously,
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publicly, forcefully, repeatedly to their followers, the big lie would not have had
the effect that it had.
And that the same is true with every issue of misinformation that we've dealt with in
recent years from COVID to the election and other issues.
These need to tell the truth to the people who take them seriously.
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Can I just add one thing to that?
At some point it becomes too late, a lie gets entrenched.
Think of the stories about January 6th, but there are moments, there's opportunities,
there's these decisive windows of opportunity where people are still forming their opinions
about things.
So think after January 6th, there was this brief moment where people condemned it.
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There was a uniform cross-party condemnation of it.
There was condemned candidates who wouldn't accept the results of the election.
If that moment had lasted, then I think public opinion would have endured criticizing.
There wouldn't have been this bifurcated public opinion.
And so the real test for politicians is when that moment comes along, in that decisive moment
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to do the right thing.
Absolutely.
And it's not by accident that as many as 67% of Republicans believe the 2020 election wasn't
legitimate.
That's because people in positions of public trust have misled them and have continued to
parrot the wrong information around it.
I want to talk a little bit, and we started to get to this, about public complacency.
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That we've seen things like January 6th, the attempts to overthrow a democratic election
and displace 81 million voters.
Yet democracy doesn't rank particularly high as a top issue for voters.
And I understand it.
People vote on pocketbook issues.
Those are the immediate things they feel.
But how do you get a nation that's always benefited from still being a democratic nation?
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How do you get its citizens to care about democracy and threats to it?
I think there's a couple of things that are really important here.
One, fighting for democracy is exhausting.
It can be grinding work.
People get tired.
You have all shown up because you're concerned about this.
But there are people, a lot of people who are kind of tired of talking about it.
But in a way, kind of authoritarians count on the exhaustion of democratic opposition.
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It's kind of long grinding work.
So that is a real concern because people kind of say, I just want to move on.
And the problem though is that that serves to the benefit, I think, of authoritarians.
That's the first thing.
The second thing is that there is a way in which we have to...
Democracy is a very abstract concept.
We're political scientists.
We talked about it in our classes.
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But it has very concrete manifestations that affects people's lives.
And so I think the burden is on political leaders once again and others to make the case for
why democracy matters to your life.
And so I think it's interesting that the kind of shift in the discourse that's happened
just in the last six months of this campaign, a much more of an emphasis on freedom, for
instance, because that's something that people can really feel.
What does democracy mean to you?
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And I think it's really critical to make the concept less abstract.
And so one of the things that we don't sometimes fully appreciate is that democracy is the
only kind of political system in the world, the best kind of political system for defending
the basic freedoms that all of us cherish.
Freedom of speech, freedom of association.
There's no other system in the world that's as good as a democracy that's defending that.
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And so we can maybe take it for granted because we've had a long history in the United States
of a pretty stable constitutional order.
But we have to remember that the things that we value the most are impossible without a
democracy.
So I think making the case for that vigorously is really essential.
Well, we're seeing something rare in actually heartening happening in this election cycle.
We're seeing some cross-partisan coalitions form.
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So you saw someone like Republican, former Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney, endorse
Kamala Harris, Adam Kinzinger and others, lifelong Republicans, coming forward and saying,
in this election, the threats are significant enough from the other side that I'm going
to vote with the Democratic Party and encourage others to.
It's actually something quite rare in our modern politics and I think speaks to the
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gravity of the moment that we're in.
But can you talk a bit about the dangers of polarization and then as a counterpoint the
importance of strong cross-partisan coalitions to just maintaining and strengthening a democracy?
Well, polarization has always been one of the primary killers of democracy.
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When we divide particularly into two camps that grow so distant that they begin to see
one another as not members of the same community, as not somebody you can relate to, and someone
whose positions or people seem to pose an existential threat, not just disagree with
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tax policy, disagree with healthcare policy, but they seem so distant that they seem to
represent a threat to our way of life or to our national culture or identity.
When a society divides into two camps that cannot recognize one another as members of
the same community, democracy gets into trouble.
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And it gets really hard to build the kind of cross-party coalition that you mentioned.
What cross-party coalitions do, among other things, I mean, first of all, it allows a
society to isolate and politically defeat an authoritarian.
It's most of the time, authoritarians in democracies do not have majority support.
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My guide Donald Trump have never had majority support in the United States.
As Daniel mentioned, it's really only about 35% of the U.S. electorate.
That's true in Europe today.
And it was true in Europe in the 30s that rarely did authoritarians have majority support.
So what is critical is that all other forces in society, from conservatives to centrists
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to leftists, joint forces, recognizing that defeating the authoritarian, that defending
democracy is more important in the short term than any partisan agenda, than any policy
agenda.
When they recognize that in joint forces, they can usually defeat an authoritarian.
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If all of the small D, democratic forces in society, from AOC to Dick Cheney and everyone
in between, joint forces usually represent a majority.
And so, first of all, it gives you the political power to isolate and defeat authoritarians.
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And second of all, it sends a really important message to society that we're not divided
on all issues, that it's entirely possible for AOC and Liz Cheney to disagree on a whole
bunch of things and to not share values and beliefs on a whole bunch of issues, but to
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nevertheless join forces in defense of the country, the constitution, democracy, and
maintaining a system where we can both debate and disagree another day.
And so sending that signal, that helps to depolarize, right?
I've wanted, been begging for a commercial, a TV commercial, an ad with Dick Cheney and
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AOC, discussing all the things that they disagree about and then concluding with their defense
of democracy and the support for Kamala Harris.
That sends a really important message, right?
When you build a broad coalition, again, that ranges from the progressive left to the conservative
right with everybody in between, that sends a message to citizens that this is not an
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ordinary election, that we need to rise above partisan differences, policy differences,
and defend institutions.
And this is not just speculation here by Steve.
I mean, there's lots of historical cases where this has happened.
I mean, just in the last several years, last year, there was an election in Poland where
with an autocratic populist party in power, it seemed to be in power for, it was going
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to be in power for a long time, a very diverse opposition, Catholic conservatives, former
socialists across the spectrum came together and despite intense differences, very conservative
Catholics and so former socialists and socialists nonetheless overlooked those differences enough
to eject that party from power.
You contrast that with what's happened in Hungary over the last 15 years where you had
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a very similar party just in the country right next door.
There's also a very vocal, mobilized, concerned opposition, but their own infighting has prevented
them from ejecting Viktor Orban from power.
And so you look throughout history any time an elected authoritarian's in power, the way
you either prevent them from getting into power or you eject them from power is through
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the formation of these kinds of coalitions.
I thought that was one of the most interesting parts in the book.
And there's some very clear parallels to Donald Trump and Viktor Orban.
What do you make of the fact that Donald Trump openly seems to esteem strong men?
What does that say about him and how you think that he would govern in a second term where
he elected?
Look, we have, to me, it is consistent with a bunch of other things that we know about
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Donald Trump and have known for a long time.
I mean, I think it is very, one of the things that we argue in the book is Donald Trump
is a unique problem, but the problem unfortunately runs deeper than Trump.
It predated Trump and it will probably persist after Trump.
The good chunk of the Republican Party has turned away from norms of democracy.
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So it's not just Trump that admires Orban, it's a big part of the Republican Party.
It's all of CPAC that embraces him.
The fact that Republicans have begun to repeat the slogan that we're actually not a democracy
we're a republic.
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Ronald Reagan didn't say that.
Ronald Reagan proudly said that we were a democracy, that we were a model democracy
for the world.
He didn't run away from the term democracy.
So my point is there are a lot of signs that not just Trump, but the whole Republican Party
is beginning to walk away from democracy.
I think admiration, I mean, Trump has got a personal shtick where he, I mean, he has
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more exaggerated authoritarian instincts than most Republicans to be sure.
This is a guy who has never accepted defeat in any election.
I think he's constitutionally incapable of accepting defeat.
And this is a guy who has admired strong, admired the ability of other leaders to issue
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orders to punish or crack down or repress opponents.
He systematically admired that.
And what worries me is Orban is showing Republicans how one can use the machinery of God.
The government has a weapon to tilt the playing field against your rivals, business, media,
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opposition.
And the fact that that is admired should worry us.
I mean, it should concern us as U.S. citizens.
Something that you hit on earlier is sort of, and you do in the book, this role that
elites play.
And certainly in the Republican Party in this moment, elites and the leaders are not stepping
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up in the way they should be.
But something that we face that's somewhat unique to this moment we live in is we live
in a very democratized media environment.
Everyone has a platform.
There are competing platforms that may not have the same standards that traditional old
school journalistic outfits would.
People are consuming information in much more of an a la carte fashion where they can choose
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to live in certain echo chambers if they want to.
How in a media environment that exists in the 21st century do we combat both polarization
and for half the country perhaps moving toward more anti-democratic values or beliefs?
Yeah.
I mean, I think certainly there's lots of new media structures that are necessary to
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deal with this.
But I would come back to the point that Steve made in this particular moment.
I mean, there's certain things that should be red lines.
And the red lines, again, of accepting elections, of condemning violence unequivocally, of respecting
basic civil liberties of fellow citizens.
And when there's misinformation especially about these kinds of things, then it's incredibly
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dangerous.
And I think the cross-partisan nature of the common nation is really critical because
I think one of the things that it's very easy to call out violations on the other side.
And so what makes, when you have a cross-partisan condemnation of unacceptable things or a cross-partisan
embrace of something that's happened and recognition, then this speaks to the veracity
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of it.
So I think kind of cross-party people willing to have to be willing, both politicians as
well as cultural elites and so on, across party lines need to be able to step up and
call out things when there's misinformation.
I mean, it's not a silver bullet.
Really, there's other, you know, the structure of media, ownership structure, like the concentration
of power in the hands of only a few tycoons and so on is probably dangerous.
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I think more competition is probably better.
I think there's a role for public media, you know, I think in democracies where a public
media takes up a larger segment of the media landscape that kind of raises the standards
on the quality of discourse and reporting and so on.
So all of these things matter.
But I think the particular angle that we take on this is just the role of political
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and cultural elites.
Just to reinforce that we've been through multiple periods of media change and changes
in media technology over time.
And there was a time when we were very worried about the impact of radio on the masses, that
it would bring fascism, as it seemed to do in Europe, people worried about television,
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how that would give rise to populism and demagoguery.
And societies, the new media landscape is challenging.
It is definitely challenging.
But societies have adapted, politicians, citizens, societies, governments have adapted to changing
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media technologies before.
What's critical is you need to, our political leaders have to work to make that happen.
They have to want to adapt our democracy.
They have to want to speak to their followers, to adopt regulations if necessary, to help
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us adapt.
And what I see is at least some politicians today taking advantage rather than trying
to correct and regulate and minimize disinformation, misinformation, take advantage of political
gain.
And that makes the challenge much more difficult.
We all remember they're eating the cats and the dogs, unfortunately.
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Never thought we'd hear in a presidential debate.
I want to talk briefly about voting rights.
Interny of the minority, your more recent book, you discuss how minority rule and structural
imbalances can distort democracy.
And in the vein of voting rights restrictions, there's still a long way this country has
to go.
We're still looking at passing the Freedom to Vote Act, the John Lewis Voting Rights
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Act, or Advancement Act, among others.
How do you see modern efforts, these modern efforts aligning with the more historic battles
to create more access to voting?
Well, both to create and in some cases to stop access to voting, I should say.
I mean, unfortunately, this country is a somewhat unique history with voting that's pretty different
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than most other democracies.
We've never had a constitutional right to vote.
Most democracies have a constitutional right to vote.
And in most democracies in the world, not only Europe, but also Latin America, governments
view it as their own obligation to make it easy to vote.
The idea is, we're a democratic system.
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Our constitution is democratic.
People have to vote in a democracy.
Elections happen in a democracy.
So the government should make it easy to vote, just like the government should try to make
it easy for people to file their tax returns, another citizen obligation.
The government should make it easy to vote.
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So in almost every democracy on God's earth, voting is on a holiday or a Sunday.
In the vast majority of democracies, you automatically are registered to vote when you
turn 18.
It's easy to vote.
This country, from the very beginning, from the 18th century, it's always been that government
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has not taken steps to make it easier.
And we've gone through many periods in our history, the most egregious being the aftermath
of the Civil War, where one party would actually make efforts to make it extraordinarily difficult
to vote.
So what has happened in the last 15 years in some states, particularly Republican-controlled
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states, to restrict access to register, make it more difficult?
It's nothing like the Jim Crow era, but it draws on that unhappy tradition that we have,
where it's been part of our environment, part of our political system, that, yeah, parties
from time to time will actually try to make it harder to vote.
Yeah.
I mean, one thing, the reason, I think, that we are in the situation is because we have
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the benefit of having a really old constitution that's been around for a long time, but also
that that's a cost of a pre-democratic constitution.
The time our constitution was written, there was the right to vote was not really an idea
on anybody's mind, and so it was never involved in the original constitution.
And so efforts, subsequent efforts to try to protect voting rights have always been
half measures, and it's been very difficult, given we have a federal system.
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And so throughout our history, you know, there have been these efforts to constitutionalize
voting rights, at least say that you can't take away voting rights on the basis of gender,
you can't take away voting rights on the basis of race, but there's no positive statement
of right to vote.
So, what these bills that you mentioned are, you know, I recommend everybody to go take
a look at them.
The Freedom to Vote Act is this incredible bill that the Congress considered a couple
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years ago that passed the House and had a majority support in the Senate, but was held
up in the Senate, which includes a whole series of things, restrictions on campaign spending,
a big money, automatic voter registration, end of partisan gerrymandering.
There's a kind of wish list of things that everybody thinks are wrong with our voting
systems.
And so these are things, I think, you know, that if there were a Democratic Party trifecta,
(33:11):
I think that there would be a pretty broad commitment to carrying out these kinds of
reforms.
And it would be an important step.
I mean, it wouldn't constitutionalize to write the vote, the right to vote, but it would
really make it easier to vote, and we're in a democracy, as Steve says, so that's, we
should have these kinds of protections.
So I want to be careful about being overly political because you all are academics and
not pundits.
But I think I speak for everyone in this audience, and we say we have just crippling anxiety
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over the election that's eight days away from us.
Assuming it, I don't think this is going to happen.
If Donald Trump wins, what is your greatest fear in terms of Democratic institutions?
What do you see as sort of the immediate threat?
Because what I find in talking to very smart people from different backgrounds, even those
who served with him, is there's a true divide over how high the stakes are, how dangerous
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it could be, how far he'll be willing to go.
So I'd be curious, pulling from your studies what you would expect and what you worry about.
So first of all, I think it will be, I don't think we should use 2016-2020 as a guide towards
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to come.
I think it will be considerably worse.
Because the, first of all, Donald Trump learned that he needs to, for example, purge and pack
the administration with loyalists to be able to use the machinery of government the way
that he imagined that he could when he took office in 2017.
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He was very frustrated and disappointed to realize that he couldn't.
So the solution is to, as much as possible, purge those institutions of civil servants
and pack them with hacks, with loyalists.
He will do that much more than he did the first time.
He didn't expect to win the presidency, had no plan, had no real team, relied on mainstream
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Republicans and technocrats to govern, and they constrained him to an important degree.
Much of that apparatus of constraint will be gone.
And the Republican Party, which when he took office in 2017, was still the party of John
McCain and Bob Corker and Jeff Flake and many other Republicans who were willing to stand
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up to him, the party has been thoroughly transformed over eight years and is almost entirely Trump-ized.
So Trump will be far less constrained by his own folks, by his own party, by his own cabinet,
by his own aides than he was the first time around.
My greatest fear, I mean, I don't share the view that if Trump wins, there won't be another
(35:53):
election in 2028 or that we will descend into fascism.
I think the small D democratic forces in this country are too strong for that.
There will be a lot of pushback, which will prevent the establishment of outright autocracy.
We're not going to become Putin's Russian for years.
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That's the good news.
The bad news is Trump is going to throw a lot of punches at our democratic rights and
our institutions and some of them will land.
I am to get to your question most concerned about two things.
First that Trump has made it very clear that he intends to pack the Justice Department
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with loyalists who will do his bidding.
And his bidding, he says, over and over and over again is to use the Department of Justice
to investigate and prosecute rivals.
He may not necessarily be able to put them all in jail or in prison, but he is going
to be able to harass the hell out of hundreds if not thousands of individuals, force them
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to spend their life savings on lawyers, maybe leave their jobs temporarily to defend themselves
and probably bully a fair number of individuals onto the people in media, in business, in the
Republican Party, in the Democratic Party, on the sidelines.
The second thing I worry about then pass to Mike DeDaniel is that Trump has been very
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clear about how he wants to respond to protests because there likely will be a lot of protests.
There was a lot of protest in the first Trump Presidents that we know from people who were
high up in the room that Trump had every intention of using the military to fire on, to violently
(37:45):
repress protesters.
And if the adults are no longer in the room, he's no longer constrained, I have no doubt
that Trump will respond to protest with repression and that could get very violent.
Yeah, so, you know, I don't know how to add to that except to say, I mean, another kind
of angle on this is this point that you had asked earlier about kind of apathy about democracy
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and this kind of exhaustion that I said that people sometimes have.
I mean, there's also a way in which people may look out to avoid the fight.
And so some of our great social institutions, business organizations, religious organizations,
universities could very easily sort of say, we don't want the fight, so we're going to
kind of keep our head down and try to stay out of trouble.
(38:29):
And that comes from a kind of exhaustion.
So that's what I fear could happen.
And so on the other hand, you know, I think Americans are pretty curmudgeonly.
I think Americans don't in general, you know, I can't imagine that.
So maybe this scenario that Steve describes it also seems plausible, but I think either
way, you know, it's, I guess, and I share Steve's point that this is not, you know,
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this is not fascism around the corner, but you know, we, you know, I have daughters and
you know, everybody has children.
You sort of think, what kind of society do you want to raise your children in?
You know, what kind, is this the democracy that we think we can have?
You know, whatever form this kind of takes, and I just, there's no way that it approaches
anything like that.
So that's, that's really what I'm concerned about.
Well, and it does make me think of the Washington Post breaking with decades of tradition and
(39:16):
choosing not to endorse a candidate in such a high stake selection.
I could argue that a national outlet doing an endorsement may not matter that much, but
the signal that it sends and the chilling effect it could have in the future.
But I, I'm so grateful for your time and I want to end on a higher note by asking you,
despite the many challenges that we face, what gives you hope for the future of democracy,
(39:39):
both in the United States and around the world?
And what can we draw from historical lessons to sort of strengthen and build a more resilient
democratic future here?
I'll go first and give you, let you have the last word.
So yeah, I mean, it comes back to a point that I made earlier that I think overwhelming
majorities of Americans share pluralistic values.
(40:02):
I mean, they, they want to live in a tolerant society.
Um, and, you know, 70% of Americans, if not more, you know, basically, if you look at
closely at surveys and we're very similar to other democracies, I mean, that, you know,
there's a tendency to kind of blame the voters, which I think is a mistake.
I mean, I think the problem is we have a set of political institutions that doesn't give
(40:23):
a voice to those broad majorities that are committed to tolerance, committed to pluralism,
committed to diversity.
And so I think if we remember that, that most Americans don't, you know, find, you know,
threats of violence and so on abhorrent, then we can kind of, we need to just reshape our
institutions.
I think things like the voting rights reforms and other kinds of democratic reforms, we have
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a long history in the United States of making our democracy more democratic.
We've kind of given up that, that effort over the last generation and we're living with
the results of that.
So I think if we, we have a set of institutions that are worthy of the people, then I think
actually there's reason to be optimistic.
So my reasons for optimism, uh, have to do a little bit with the, the, one of the central
(41:08):
arguments of tyranny of the minority.
And then there are a lot of reasons.
We wrote this book because we were, people were asking us and we were asking ourselves,
how the hell did this happen?
How do we get to a point where US democracy was going off the rails?
And there are a lot of answers.
(41:28):
There's no simple explanation for that.
There's no single factor.
But our view that the, for us, the, the principle cause is this transition that we talked about
at the beginning.
The United States is the first democratic society, at least to my knowledge, that has
gone through a transition in which a dominant ethnic group loses its majority in dominant
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status.
And that's a BFD.
That's tough.
That has generated a, a fierce reaction by a minority of Americans, but a fierce reaction
nevertheless.
That is not the only reason, but it is a big reason why we're in the middle of this earthquake
(42:18):
right now.
So the question is, are we going to get to the, I'm really mixing my metaphors late
in the evening, but because you don't get to the, you don't sail your ship to the other
side of an earthquake, right?
I'm in a bad place.
How are we going to get our ship to the other side of the earthquake?
I actually think we will for a couple of reasons.
And these are my reasons for optimism.
(42:40):
One we actually, the United States has more experience than any other democracy on earth
in dealing with diversity.
We have dealt with ways of immigration before, not always as quickly or as nicely as maybe
we would have liked, but we as a society know how to absorb diversity, know how to create
(43:05):
one America out of many.
We've done it before.
But most importantly, I look at younger generations, millennials and Gen Z, and look at their attitudes
towards diversity.
And they are much, much more tolerant than our generation or our parents generation.
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And so if you, I firmly believe that young people have lots of flaws, but they are much
better equipped to live in a diverse America than their parents and their grandparents.
And I'm quite hopeful that they'll get us there.
(43:48):
It was very well said.
Thank you again, Daniel Ziblatt and Stephen Levitsky.
The books are How Democracies Die in Tyranny of the Minority.
Please buy them, read them, and they will be signing their books afterwards.
So thank you all for joining us tonight.
Thank you.
You're listening to the United to Preserve Democracy and the Rule of Law Speaker Series,
(00:05):
presented by Democracy First.
Join us for a conversation with the authors of How Democracies Die, Harvard professors
Daniel Ziblatt and Stephen Levitsky.
They were interviewed by Alyssa Farragriffin in Philadelphia on October 28th, just before
the 2024 election.
Alyssa is a co-host on The View and was White House Communications Director in Donald Trump's
(00:28):
first term.
She left the administration following the January 6th insurrection and is a vocal critic
of Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
So I want to start with something that struck me in How Democracies Die, which is you pull
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from historic and then more modern parallels of declines in democratic institutions.
You explore the fragility of democratic systems.
Based on your research, what are some of the parallels you see between historic threats
to democracy and then the more modern ones that we're facing today?
Yeah, thank you.
And thank you for doing this.
(01:09):
It's really wonderful to be with all of you this evening.
Yeah, you know, so in many ways, American democracy is more resilient than a lot of the
democracies who we've spent our careers studying.
So I've studied Europe, Steve, Latin America.
I've really focused on the interwar years of the period between World War I and World
War II.
So there's many ways in which American democracy looks more resilient.
I think it is.
(01:30):
But they're still disturbing parallels.
And I think one of the most striking is, you know, in these years between World War I and
World War II, there was rampant political violence.
That is people fighting in the streets, people fighting over power using violent rhetoric.
You have people attacking parliament buildings.
There was one very famous moment in France in 1934 where a bunch of militia members attacked
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the French parliament building, tried to assassinate politicians.
So violence happens from time to time in democracies.
The critical question in the interwar years and I think in the United States today is
how do mainstream politicians respond to that?
And one of the things that really led to the demise of democracy in many countries and
in the center of Europe in this period was when mainstream politicians basically stood
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by the side and didn't condemn it forcefully or often tried to work with those who engage
in violent behavior.
When mainstream politicians, people wearing suits and ties thought that they could kind
of co-op this, use the energy on the extreme right or the extreme left to try to get themselves
into power.
That's when democracy got into trouble.
And I think the thing that we find worrying about the current moment in the United States
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is we see that happening as well too often.
Politicians who mainstream politicians again wearing suits and ties, men and women thinking
that well, we can write this out, we can use this energy to kind of write ourselves to
power.
And the record of history is very clear that that really doesn't end well.
Very interesting.
And I know when I think of that in the context of the post-Trump era, there were many people
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who I don't think themselves are deeply anti-democratic but had opportunities to call out his behavior
and instead chose to normalize it.
Think of Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy if you're wondering.
But one thing you hit on in the book that I think is fascinating is the role institutions
play.
And your research discusses the importance of both formal institutions but then also formal
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institutions but also informal norms in maintaining a stable democracy.
And this was a bit eye-opening to me these sort of handshake agreements that exist that
we just assume or agree to but are not necessarily binding in the way formal institutions are.
What do you see as the most critical political norms under threat today and how can societies
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begin to rebuild those norms when they start to erode?
Okay.
I think the critical norms have shifted and shifted in a not very happy direction.
When we wrote How Democracy is Dying Now six years ago, seven years ago, we focused on
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two norms that we think are critical for the functioning of any democracy.
One is mutual toleration which is accepting the legitimacy of your political rivals.
Not basically not treating your rival as an enemy but rather as someone who is equally
patriotic, loves her, his country as much as we do and has a legitimate right to be
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out there disagreeing with us, competing with us.
Even if they win an election, has a legitimate right to govern us.
If we don't have that basic toleration of our opponents, of our rivals, it's really
hard to sustain a democracy.
The other one a little more complicated is this thing that we call forbearance which
is a willingness not to weaponize institutions.
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Turns out that if you try hard enough, you can weaponize almost any institution.
Even the most well-designed institutions, even the US Constitution, if you work hard
enough, if you try hard enough, you can find loopholes, you can find ways to manipulate
it, you can find ways to use the letter of the law to subvert the spirit of the law.
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A functioning democracy really requires a shared commitment among all politicians not
to go there, not to weaponize institutions, not to use the letter of the law to subvert
its spirit.
That was our concern six years ago.
That's still a concern, but we have even more fundamental norms and I would say rules of
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democracy, basic rules of democracy that are now under threat.
When we wrote How Democracies Die, we didn't spend much time thinking about the cardinal
rule of democracy which is that you've got to accept the results of elections, win or
lose.
We did not think in 2018 that that would be an issue in the United States, that we would
(06:03):
have to reteach ourselves to accept the results of elections.
We've slid from a point where we're worrying about civility and treating one another with
a minimum of legitimacy to a point where we have to worry that a large number of our
politicians are not willing to accept the results of elections.
The other one which Daniel mentioned is a really critical rule of democracy is you've
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got to always unambiguously, under all circumstances, renounce violence.
Clearly unambiguously renounce political violence.
Not tolerate it, not wink at it, not condone it, not justify it, not use what aboutism,
but denounce it even if it's done on your own side.
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That again, six, seven years ago, that norm seemed to still hold in the United States
and now not so much.
We've got even, unfortunately, even deeper concerns than mutual toleration and forbearance,
the basic rules of democracy are now under threat.
How do you get it back?
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We can dig deeper into this if you want to.
Unfortunately, looking at other cases in history, I'm pretty pessimistic.
Politicians don't relearn these norms until they've lost their democracy, until they've
gone over the cliff.
In Chile, after the military dictatorship, in Spain, after Franco, in Germany, after
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the Nazi period, that's when politicians got it together and rethought how they did politics.
There aren't many cases of politicians or political leaders before they reach the cliff,
stopping and saying, okay, wait, we've got to do something different.
That's a fascinating point to me because as I travel around warning against what a second
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Trump administration would look like, something that I often hear as pushback is that didn't
happen in the first term.
How is it going to be drastically worse or different?
Something I point to that you make this point is there's actually ways that you can use
the existing institutions in a perfectly lawful manner, technically speaking.
One thing I talk about that he learned and didn't understand in his first term is you
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can appoint cabinet secretaries, for example, in acting capacities for 180 days.
They can bypass Senate confirmation.
They don't need that stamp of approval from a bipartisan coalition.
Even to that, I've heard people say you can't get much done.
You can get an incredible amount done in 180 days running a department, for example.
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But I think that's really important.
Something else that you and I were all talking about backstage is America is so unique in
so many ways.
We are a truly multinational democratic nation that I think we haven't truly seen something
that's as multiracial as America in modern history, that's been able to operate as a
(09:05):
democratic republic and overcome some of these things that we know creep in, nativism, fear
of others, desires for isolation versus how we're going to engage abroad.
How is America unique?
What are actually, frankly, the dangers that come with who we are?
I think you are right that it's pretty unusual for a country, for a previously dominant ethnic
(09:29):
majority to lose its majority status within a democracy.
The U.S., though, in other respects is not unique in the sense that other democracies
around the world are also becoming more diverse.
So you walk around the streets of Zurich or Amsterdam, they look like the streets of
any American city, incredibly ethnically diverse, due to immigration.
So in many ways we share these challenges and opportunities.
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What is striking is that, as you say, there is a reaction against that for people who
feel like that their way of life, traditional way of life is being challenged.
That's happened throughout American history, I should say.
I mean, we've had other attempts at multiracial democracy in the United States, that's what
the Reconstruction era was all about, in fact.
In the past, we failed that test and in a sense we now have a second broad experiment
(10:15):
at this and can we make our way through it.
So in terms of what, so we have a longer history of trying to live in a diverse, large, diverse
democracy.
Other democracies face this same opportunity and challenge.
And similarly, there's these radical right movements in Western Europe, political parties
that run on opposition to immigration, opposition to cultural diversity.
(10:40):
And actually we're quite similar in some respects, around 30% of most West European
electorates vote for radical right anti-immigration parties.
And in some ways it's quite analogous to, I would say, the 35% core of the MAGA movement.
So everywhere this is a challenge.
The question is how do you maintain a democracy in the face of that challenge, in the face
of a political party that wants to undermine political rights to fellow citizens?
(11:05):
And I think what's been distinctive about the United States is that because we have
a two-party system, a variety of other reasons that we lay out in tyranny of the minority,
that 35% has outsized influence in the United States.
In Western Europe, these political parties tend to be on the margins.
At best they may be able to form a coalition with a mainstream party.
In the United States, we have a situation where this movement has taken charge of one
(11:27):
of the political parties.
And so, in effect, the good news is that our voters are not so dissimilar from voters
in other countries.
Our citizens are broadly tolerant of democracy, but we have this kind of particular dynamic
because of our party system that we face these serious challenges.
Yeah, that's very well said.
Can you talk a bit about the role that misinformation plays in undermining democracies?
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Have you seen it successfully combated before?
And in this moment we're living in, in the digital age, we're going to see the most
misinformation and disinformation spread in this election that we ever have.
What role do citizens play in encountering it?
So a couple of things.
First of all, misinformation, disinformation is not new.
It's existed since the first U.S. election.
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It's existed across time.
The speed and extent to which it can travel has changed due to technologies.
And this is a real challenge, a serious challenge.
But it's not a new thing.
And although without question, it is especially a really polarized electorate in a heavily
(12:37):
armed society with elections that are going to be as close as the last couple of elections
have been in the election this year is, it can do a lot of damage.
But there's a really important missing piece that I think we often neglect when we think
about the challenge of misinformation.
And that's the role of elites.
(13:00):
There's a lot of research that shows that when elites that we respect, if I'm a conservative,
then maybe my religious leaders, maybe the figures on television or radio that I listen
to or Republican politicians, we listen to them.
(13:23):
We take cues from them.
And so in my view, the biggest problem with misinformation has been the fact that conservative
elites have not spoken the truth to their rank and file, whether it is religious leaders,
Fox News and other media figures or Republican politicians.
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They've either in some cases parroted the misinformation or just hid under their desk
and refused to condemn it.
And Republican politicians had come out and said, no, once we knew the results of the
2020 election, they come out and said, no, Joe Biden won the election, spoken unambiguously,
(14:07):
publicly, forcefully, repeatedly to their followers, the big lie would not have had
the effect that it had.
And that the same is true with every issue of misinformation that we've dealt with in
recent years from COVID to the election and other issues.
These need to tell the truth to the people who take them seriously.
(14:28):
Can I just add one thing to that?
At some point it becomes too late, a lie gets entrenched.
Think of the stories about January 6th, but there are moments, there's opportunities,
there's these decisive windows of opportunity where people are still forming their opinions
about things.
So think after January 6th, there was this brief moment where people condemned it.
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There was a uniform cross-party condemnation of it.
There was condemned candidates who wouldn't accept the results of the election.
If that moment had lasted, then I think public opinion would have endured criticizing.
There wouldn't have been this bifurcated public opinion.
And so the real test for politicians is when that moment comes along, in that decisive moment
(15:10):
to do the right thing.
Absolutely.
And it's not by accident that as many as 67% of Republicans believe the 2020 election wasn't
legitimate.
That's because people in positions of public trust have misled them and have continued to
parrot the wrong information around it.
I want to talk a little bit, and we started to get to this, about public complacency.
(15:30):
That we've seen things like January 6th, the attempts to overthrow a democratic election
and displace 81 million voters.
Yet democracy doesn't rank particularly high as a top issue for voters.
And I understand it.
People vote on pocketbook issues.
Those are the immediate things they feel.
But how do you get a nation that's always benefited from still being a democratic nation?
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How do you get its citizens to care about democracy and threats to it?
I think there's a couple of things that are really important here.
One, fighting for democracy is exhausting.
It can be grinding work.
People get tired.
You have all shown up because you're concerned about this.
But there are people, a lot of people who are kind of tired of talking about it.
But in a way, kind of authoritarians count on the exhaustion of democratic opposition.
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It's kind of long grinding work.
So that is a real concern because people kind of say, I just want to move on.
And the problem though is that that serves to the benefit, I think, of authoritarians.
That's the first thing.
The second thing is that there is a way in which we have to...
Democracy is a very abstract concept.
We're political scientists.
We talked about it in our classes.
(16:34):
But it has very concrete manifestations that affects people's lives.
And so I think the burden is on political leaders once again and others to make the case for
why democracy matters to your life.
And so I think it's interesting that the kind of shift in the discourse that's happened
just in the last six months of this campaign, a much more of an emphasis on freedom, for
instance, because that's something that people can really feel.
What does democracy mean to you?
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And I think it's really critical to make the concept less abstract.
And so one of the things that we don't sometimes fully appreciate is that democracy is the
only kind of political system in the world, the best kind of political system for defending
the basic freedoms that all of us cherish.
Freedom of speech, freedom of association.
There's no other system in the world that's as good as a democracy that's defending that.
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And so we can maybe take it for granted because we've had a long history in the United States
of a pretty stable constitutional order.
But we have to remember that the things that we value the most are impossible without a
democracy.
So I think making the case for that vigorously is really essential.
Well, we're seeing something rare in actually heartening happening in this election cycle.
We're seeing some cross-partisan coalitions form.
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So you saw someone like Republican, former Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney, endorse
Kamala Harris, Adam Kinzinger and others, lifelong Republicans, coming forward and saying,
in this election, the threats are significant enough from the other side that I'm going
to vote with the Democratic Party and encourage others to.
It's actually something quite rare in our modern politics and I think speaks to the
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gravity of the moment that we're in.
But can you talk a bit about the dangers of polarization and then as a counterpoint the
importance of strong cross-partisan coalitions to just maintaining and strengthening a democracy?
Well, polarization has always been one of the primary killers of democracy.
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When we divide particularly into two camps that grow so distant that they begin to see
one another as not members of the same community, as not somebody you can relate to, and someone
whose positions or people seem to pose an existential threat, not just disagree with
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tax policy, disagree with healthcare policy, but they seem so distant that they seem to
represent a threat to our way of life or to our national culture or identity.
When a society divides into two camps that cannot recognize one another as members of
the same community, democracy gets into trouble.
(19:12):
And it gets really hard to build the kind of cross-party coalition that you mentioned.
What cross-party coalitions do, among other things, I mean, first of all, it allows a
society to isolate and politically defeat an authoritarian.
It's most of the time, authoritarians in democracies do not have majority support.
(19:37):
My guide Donald Trump have never had majority support in the United States.
As Daniel mentioned, it's really only about 35% of the U.S. electorate.
That's true in Europe today.
And it was true in Europe in the 30s that rarely did authoritarians have majority support.
So what is critical is that all other forces in society, from conservatives to centrists
(20:02):
to leftists, joint forces, recognizing that defeating the authoritarian, that defending
democracy is more important in the short term than any partisan agenda, than any policy
agenda.
When they recognize that in joint forces, they can usually defeat an authoritarian.
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If all of the small D, democratic forces in society, from AOC to Dick Cheney and everyone
in between, joint forces usually represent a majority.
And so, first of all, it gives you the political power to isolate and defeat authoritarians.
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And second of all, it sends a really important message to society that we're not divided
on all issues, that it's entirely possible for AOC and Liz Cheney to disagree on a whole
bunch of things and to not share values and beliefs on a whole bunch of issues, but to
(21:04):
nevertheless join forces in defense of the country, the constitution, democracy, and
maintaining a system where we can both debate and disagree another day.
And so sending that signal, that helps to depolarize, right?
I've wanted, been begging for a commercial, a TV commercial, an ad with Dick Cheney and
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AOC, discussing all the things that they disagree about and then concluding with their defense
of democracy and the support for Kamala Harris.
That sends a really important message, right?
When you build a broad coalition, again, that ranges from the progressive left to the conservative
right with everybody in between, that sends a message to citizens that this is not an
(21:49):
ordinary election, that we need to rise above partisan differences, policy differences,
and defend institutions.
And this is not just speculation here by Steve.
I mean, there's lots of historical cases where this has happened.
I mean, just in the last several years, last year, there was an election in Poland where
with an autocratic populist party in power, it seemed to be in power for, it was going
(22:12):
to be in power for a long time, a very diverse opposition, Catholic conservatives, former
socialists across the spectrum came together and despite intense differences, very conservative
Catholics and so former socialists and socialists nonetheless overlooked those differences enough
to eject that party from power.
You contrast that with what's happened in Hungary over the last 15 years where you had
(22:33):
a very similar party just in the country right next door.
There's also a very vocal, mobilized, concerned opposition, but their own infighting has prevented
them from ejecting Viktor Orban from power.
And so you look throughout history any time an elected authoritarian's in power, the way
you either prevent them from getting into power or you eject them from power is through
(22:53):
the formation of these kinds of coalitions.
I thought that was one of the most interesting parts in the book.
And there's some very clear parallels to Donald Trump and Viktor Orban.
What do you make of the fact that Donald Trump openly seems to esteem strong men?
What does that say about him and how you think that he would govern in a second term where
he elected?
Look, we have, to me, it is consistent with a bunch of other things that we know about
(23:22):
Donald Trump and have known for a long time.
I mean, I think it is very, one of the things that we argue in the book is Donald Trump
is a unique problem, but the problem unfortunately runs deeper than Trump.
It predated Trump and it will probably persist after Trump.
The good chunk of the Republican Party has turned away from norms of democracy.
(23:48):
So it's not just Trump that admires Orban, it's a big part of the Republican Party.
It's all of CPAC that embraces him.
The fact that Republicans have begun to repeat the slogan that we're actually not a democracy
we're a republic.
(24:10):
Ronald Reagan didn't say that.
Ronald Reagan proudly said that we were a democracy, that we were a model democracy
for the world.
He didn't run away from the term democracy.
So my point is there are a lot of signs that not just Trump, but the whole Republican Party
is beginning to walk away from democracy.
I think admiration, I mean, Trump has got a personal shtick where he, I mean, he has
(24:35):
more exaggerated authoritarian instincts than most Republicans to be sure.
This is a guy who has never accepted defeat in any election.
I think he's constitutionally incapable of accepting defeat.
And this is a guy who has admired strong, admired the ability of other leaders to issue
(24:57):
orders to punish or crack down or repress opponents.
He systematically admired that.
And what worries me is Orban is showing Republicans how one can use the machinery of God.
The government has a weapon to tilt the playing field against your rivals, business, media,
(25:23):
opposition.
And the fact that that is admired should worry us.
I mean, it should concern us as U.S. citizens.
Something that you hit on earlier is sort of, and you do in the book, this role that
elites play.
And certainly in the Republican Party in this moment, elites and the leaders are not stepping
(25:43):
up in the way they should be.
But something that we face that's somewhat unique to this moment we live in is we live
in a very democratized media environment.
Everyone has a platform.
There are competing platforms that may not have the same standards that traditional old
school journalistic outfits would.
People are consuming information in much more of an a la carte fashion where they can choose
(26:05):
to live in certain echo chambers if they want to.
How in a media environment that exists in the 21st century do we combat both polarization
and for half the country perhaps moving toward more anti-democratic values or beliefs?
Yeah.
I mean, I think certainly there's lots of new media structures that are necessary to
(26:30):
deal with this.
But I would come back to the point that Steve made in this particular moment.
I mean, there's certain things that should be red lines.
And the red lines, again, of accepting elections, of condemning violence unequivocally, of respecting
basic civil liberties of fellow citizens.
And when there's misinformation especially about these kinds of things, then it's incredibly
(26:52):
dangerous.
And I think the cross-partisan nature of the common nation is really critical because
I think one of the things that it's very easy to call out violations on the other side.
And so what makes, when you have a cross-partisan condemnation of unacceptable things or a cross-partisan
embrace of something that's happened and recognition, then this speaks to the veracity
(27:17):
of it.
So I think kind of cross-party people willing to have to be willing, both politicians as
well as cultural elites and so on, across party lines need to be able to step up and
call out things when there's misinformation.
I mean, it's not a silver bullet.
Really, there's other, you know, the structure of media, ownership structure, like the concentration
of power in the hands of only a few tycoons and so on is probably dangerous.
(27:39):
I think more competition is probably better.
I think there's a role for public media, you know, I think in democracies where a public
media takes up a larger segment of the media landscape that kind of raises the standards
on the quality of discourse and reporting and so on.
So all of these things matter.
But I think the particular angle that we take on this is just the role of political
(27:59):
and cultural elites.
Just to reinforce that we've been through multiple periods of media change and changes
in media technology over time.
And there was a time when we were very worried about the impact of radio on the masses, that
it would bring fascism, as it seemed to do in Europe, people worried about television,
(28:20):
how that would give rise to populism and demagoguery.
And societies, the new media landscape is challenging.
It is definitely challenging.
But societies have adapted, politicians, citizens, societies, governments have adapted to changing
(28:41):
media technologies before.
What's critical is you need to, our political leaders have to work to make that happen.
They have to want to adapt our democracy.
They have to want to speak to their followers, to adopt regulations if necessary, to help
(29:04):
us adapt.
And what I see is at least some politicians today taking advantage rather than trying
to correct and regulate and minimize disinformation, misinformation, take advantage of political
gain.
And that makes the challenge much more difficult.
We all remember they're eating the cats and the dogs, unfortunately.
(29:26):
Never thought we'd hear in a presidential debate.
I want to talk briefly about voting rights.
Interny of the minority, your more recent book, you discuss how minority rule and structural
imbalances can distort democracy.
And in the vein of voting rights restrictions, there's still a long way this country has
to go.
We're still looking at passing the Freedom to Vote Act, the John Lewis Voting Rights
(29:46):
Act, or Advancement Act, among others.
How do you see modern efforts, these modern efforts aligning with the more historic battles
to create more access to voting?
Well, both to create and in some cases to stop access to voting, I should say.
I mean, unfortunately, this country is a somewhat unique history with voting that's pretty different
(30:13):
than most other democracies.
We've never had a constitutional right to vote.
Most democracies have a constitutional right to vote.
And in most democracies in the world, not only Europe, but also Latin America, governments
view it as their own obligation to make it easy to vote.
The idea is, we're a democratic system.
(30:35):
Our constitution is democratic.
People have to vote in a democracy.
Elections happen in a democracy.
So the government should make it easy to vote, just like the government should try to make
it easy for people to file their tax returns, another citizen obligation.
The government should make it easy to vote.
(30:57):
So in almost every democracy on God's earth, voting is on a holiday or a Sunday.
In the vast majority of democracies, you automatically are registered to vote when you
turn 18.
It's easy to vote.
This country, from the very beginning, from the 18th century, it's always been that government
(31:18):
has not taken steps to make it easier.
And we've gone through many periods in our history, the most egregious being the aftermath
of the Civil War, where one party would actually make efforts to make it extraordinarily difficult
to vote.
So what has happened in the last 15 years in some states, particularly Republican-controlled
(31:39):
states, to restrict access to register, make it more difficult?
It's nothing like the Jim Crow era, but it draws on that unhappy tradition that we have,
where it's been part of our environment, part of our political system, that, yeah, parties
from time to time will actually try to make it harder to vote.
Yeah.
I mean, one thing, the reason, I think, that we are in the situation is because we have
(32:03):
the benefit of having a really old constitution that's been around for a long time, but also
that that's a cost of a pre-democratic constitution.
The time our constitution was written, there was the right to vote was not really an idea
on anybody's mind, and so it was never involved in the original constitution.
And so efforts, subsequent efforts to try to protect voting rights have always been
half measures, and it's been very difficult, given we have a federal system.
(32:26):
And so throughout our history, you know, there have been these efforts to constitutionalize
voting rights, at least say that you can't take away voting rights on the basis of gender,
you can't take away voting rights on the basis of race, but there's no positive statement
of right to vote.
So, what these bills that you mentioned are, you know, I recommend everybody to go take
a look at them.
The Freedom to Vote Act is this incredible bill that the Congress considered a couple
(32:48):
years ago that passed the House and had a majority support in the Senate, but was held
up in the Senate, which includes a whole series of things, restrictions on campaign spending,
a big money, automatic voter registration, end of partisan gerrymandering.
There's a kind of wish list of things that everybody thinks are wrong with our voting
systems.
And so these are things, I think, you know, that if there were a Democratic Party trifecta,
(33:11):
I think that there would be a pretty broad commitment to carrying out these kinds of
reforms.
And it would be an important step.
I mean, it wouldn't constitutionalize to write the vote, the right to vote, but it would
really make it easier to vote, and we're in a democracy, as Steve says, so that's, we
should have these kinds of protections.
So I want to be careful about being overly political because you all are academics and
not pundits.
But I think I speak for everyone in this audience, and we say we have just crippling anxiety
(33:35):
over the election that's eight days away from us.
Assuming it, I don't think this is going to happen.
If Donald Trump wins, what is your greatest fear in terms of Democratic institutions?
What do you see as sort of the immediate threat?
Because what I find in talking to very smart people from different backgrounds, even those
who served with him, is there's a true divide over how high the stakes are, how dangerous
(34:00):
it could be, how far he'll be willing to go.
So I'd be curious, pulling from your studies what you would expect and what you worry about.
So first of all, I think it will be, I don't think we should use 2016-2020 as a guide towards
(34:20):
to come.
I think it will be considerably worse.
Because the, first of all, Donald Trump learned that he needs to, for example, purge and pack
the administration with loyalists to be able to use the machinery of government the way
that he imagined that he could when he took office in 2017.
(34:43):
He was very frustrated and disappointed to realize that he couldn't.
So the solution is to, as much as possible, purge those institutions of civil servants
and pack them with hacks, with loyalists.
He will do that much more than he did the first time.
He didn't expect to win the presidency, had no plan, had no real team, relied on mainstream
(35:06):
Republicans and technocrats to govern, and they constrained him to an important degree.
Much of that apparatus of constraint will be gone.
And the Republican Party, which when he took office in 2017, was still the party of John
McCain and Bob Corker and Jeff Flake and many other Republicans who were willing to stand
(35:27):
up to him, the party has been thoroughly transformed over eight years and is almost entirely Trump-ized.
So Trump will be far less constrained by his own folks, by his own party, by his own cabinet,
by his own aides than he was the first time around.
My greatest fear, I mean, I don't share the view that if Trump wins, there won't be another
(35:53):
election in 2028 or that we will descend into fascism.
I think the small D democratic forces in this country are too strong for that.
There will be a lot of pushback, which will prevent the establishment of outright autocracy.
We're not going to become Putin's Russian for years.
(36:15):
That's the good news.
The bad news is Trump is going to throw a lot of punches at our democratic rights and
our institutions and some of them will land.
I am to get to your question most concerned about two things.
First that Trump has made it very clear that he intends to pack the Justice Department
(36:35):
with loyalists who will do his bidding.
And his bidding, he says, over and over and over again is to use the Department of Justice
to investigate and prosecute rivals.
He may not necessarily be able to put them all in jail or in prison, but he is going
to be able to harass the hell out of hundreds if not thousands of individuals, force them
(36:59):
to spend their life savings on lawyers, maybe leave their jobs temporarily to defend themselves
and probably bully a fair number of individuals onto the people in media, in business, in the
Republican Party, in the Democratic Party, on the sidelines.
The second thing I worry about then pass to Mike DeDaniel is that Trump has been very
(37:22):
clear about how he wants to respond to protests because there likely will be a lot of protests.
There was a lot of protest in the first Trump Presidents that we know from people who were
high up in the room that Trump had every intention of using the military to fire on, to violently
(37:45):
repress protesters.
And if the adults are no longer in the room, he's no longer constrained, I have no doubt
that Trump will respond to protest with repression and that could get very violent.
Yeah, so, you know, I don't know how to add to that except to say, I mean, another kind
of angle on this is this point that you had asked earlier about kind of apathy about democracy
(38:08):
and this kind of exhaustion that I said that people sometimes have.
I mean, there's also a way in which people may look out to avoid the fight.
And so some of our great social institutions, business organizations, religious organizations,
universities could very easily sort of say, we don't want the fight, so we're going to
kind of keep our head down and try to stay out of trouble.
(38:29):
And that comes from a kind of exhaustion.
So that's what I fear could happen.
And so on the other hand, you know, I think Americans are pretty curmudgeonly.
I think Americans don't in general, you know, I can't imagine that.
So maybe this scenario that Steve describes it also seems plausible, but I think either
way, you know, it's, I guess, and I share Steve's point that this is not, you know,
(38:53):
this is not fascism around the corner, but you know, we, you know, I have daughters and
you know, everybody has children.
You sort of think, what kind of society do you want to raise your children in?
You know, what kind, is this the democracy that we think we can have?
You know, whatever form this kind of takes, and I just, there's no way that it approaches
anything like that.
So that's, that's really what I'm concerned about.
Well, and it does make me think of the Washington Post breaking with decades of tradition and
(39:16):
choosing not to endorse a candidate in such a high stake selection.
I could argue that a national outlet doing an endorsement may not matter that much, but
the signal that it sends and the chilling effect it could have in the future.
But I, I'm so grateful for your time and I want to end on a higher note by asking you,
despite the many challenges that we face, what gives you hope for the future of democracy,
(39:39):
both in the United States and around the world?
And what can we draw from historical lessons to sort of strengthen and build a more resilient
democratic future here?
I'll go first and give you, let you have the last word.
So yeah, I mean, it comes back to a point that I made earlier that I think overwhelming
majorities of Americans share pluralistic values.
(40:02):
I mean, they, they want to live in a tolerant society.
Um, and, you know, 70% of Americans, if not more, you know, basically, if you look at
closely at surveys and we're very similar to other democracies, I mean, that, you know,
there's a tendency to kind of blame the voters, which I think is a mistake.
I mean, I think the problem is we have a set of political institutions that doesn't give
(40:23):
a voice to those broad majorities that are committed to tolerance, committed to pluralism,
committed to diversity.
And so I think if we remember that, that most Americans don't, you know, find, you know,
threats of violence and so on abhorrent, then we can kind of, we need to just reshape our
institutions.
I think things like the voting rights reforms and other kinds of democratic reforms, we have
(40:46):
a long history in the United States of making our democracy more democratic.
We've kind of given up that, that effort over the last generation and we're living with
the results of that.
So I think if we, we have a set of institutions that are worthy of the people, then I think
actually there's reason to be optimistic.
So my reasons for optimism, uh, have to do a little bit with the, the, one of the central
(41:08):
arguments of tyranny of the minority.
And then there are a lot of reasons.
We wrote this book because we were, people were asking us and we were asking ourselves,
how the hell did this happen?
How do we get to a point where US democracy was going off the rails?
And there are a lot of answers.
(41:28):
There's no simple explanation for that.
There's no single factor.
But our view that the, for us, the, the principle cause is this transition that we talked about
at the beginning.
The United States is the first democratic society, at least to my knowledge, that has
gone through a transition in which a dominant ethnic group loses its majority in dominant
(41:55):
status.
And that's a BFD.
That's tough.
That has generated a, a fierce reaction by a minority of Americans, but a fierce reaction
nevertheless.
That is not the only reason, but it is a big reason why we're in the middle of this earthquake
(42:18):
right now.
So the question is, are we going to get to the, I'm really mixing my metaphors late
in the evening, but because you don't get to the, you don't sail your ship to the other
side of an earthquake, right?
I'm in a bad place.
How are we going to get our ship to the other side of the earthquake?
I actually think we will for a couple of reasons.
And these are my reasons for optimism.
(42:40):
One we actually, the United States has more experience than any other democracy on earth
in dealing with diversity.
We have dealt with ways of immigration before, not always as quickly or as nicely as maybe
we would have liked, but we as a society know how to absorb diversity, know how to create
(43:05):
one America out of many.
We've done it before.
But most importantly, I look at younger generations, millennials and Gen Z, and look at their attitudes
towards diversity.
And they are much, much more tolerant than our generation or our parents generation.
(43:26):
And so if you, I firmly believe that young people have lots of flaws, but they are much
better equipped to live in a diverse America than their parents and their grandparents.
And I'm quite hopeful that they'll get us there.
(43:48):
It was very well said.
Thank you again, Daniel Ziblatt and Stephen Levitsky.
The books are How Democracies Die in Tyranny of the Minority.
Please buy them, read them, and they will be signing their books afterwards.
So thank you all for joining us tonight.
Thank you.
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