53 Quotes by Steven Levitsky

Democracies do have written rules (constitutions) and referees (the courts). But these work best, and survive longest, in countries where written constitutions are reinforced by their own unwritten rules of the game. These rules or norms serve as the soft guardrails of democracy, preventing day-to-day political competition from devolving into a no-holds-barred conflict.

Even well-designed constitutions cannot, by themselves, guarantee democracy. For one, constitutions are always incomplete. Like any set of rules, they have countless gaps and ambiguities. No operating manual, no matter how detailed, can anticipate all possible contingencies or prescribe how to behave under all possible circumstances.

But when faced with a would-be authoritarian, establishment politicians must unambiguously reject him or her and do everything possible to defend democratic institutions—even if that means temporarily joining forces with bitter rivals.

Uma coisa que distingue autocratas de líderes democráticos contemporâneos é sua intolerância à crítica e a disposição de usar seu poder para punir aqueles que - na oposição, na mídia ou na sociedade civil - venham a criticá-los.

Authoritarian politicians cast their rivals as criminal, subversive, unpatriotic, or a threat to national security or the existing way of life.

The drift into authoritarianism doesn’t always set off alarm bells. Citizens are often slow to realize that their democracy is being dismantled even as it happens before their eyes.

There is always uncertainty over how a politician with no track record will behave in office, but as we noted earlier, antidemocratic leaders are often identifiable before they come to power.

One of the great ironies of how democracies die is that the very defense of democracy is often used as a pretext for its subversion. Would-be autocrats often use economic crises, natural disasters, and especially security threats—wars, armed insurgencies, or terrorist attacks—to justify antidemocratic measures.

Collective abdication—the transfer of authority to a leader who threatens democracy—usually flows from one of two sources. The first is the misguided belief that an authoritarian can be controlled or tamed. The second is what sociologist Ivan Ermakoff calls “ideological collusion,” in which the authoritarian’s agenda overlaps sufficiently with that of mainstream politicians that abdication is desirable, or at least preferable to the alternatives.