How Democracies Die is a thorough look at the dangers that modern democracies face. The writers analyze the potential threat of democratic degradation in the United States by drawing upon historical instances from European and Latin American political systems. Many people think that military coups are the main reason why democratic governments fall apart, but this book says that the main reason why democratic governments have been falling apart lately is because the people in power are becoming more authoritarian, not because of military interventions.

The book looks at how modern democracies are slowly dying over the course of its nine chapters and suggests ways to keep democracy from getting worse. The book makes it clear in chapters one through five that democratic collapse does not happen through coups, but rather through the failure of gatekeeping institutions to keep authoritarian-leaning characters out, as seen in Trump’s 2016 election. The book says that this failure is followed by partisan abdication, which is when elites put party loyalty above democratic norms. It lets these leaders act like dictators by using referees, pushing opponents to the sidelines, and changing the rules while still making it look like democracy. This dynamic both promotes and speeds up the breakdown of two important implicit norms: mutual toleration – the expectation that political opponents will accept each other as legitimate rivals – and institutional forbearance – the norm of restraint in the exercise of legal powers even in situations where doing so would be politically beneficial. These norms used to protect democracy, but they have become weaker because of growing polarization. The outcome is a self-perpetuating spiral of democratic deterioration that formal institutions alone cannot repair.

Chapters six through eight of the book show how bipartisan cooperation grew once racial issues were taken off the national agenda, from the time after the Civil War to the time of the civil rights movement. It looks at how Republican obstructionism offended democratic protections, from Newt Gingrich’s aggressive tactics in the 1990s to the growing divide and rule-breaking by both parties under the presidencies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama. It describes Donald Trump’s first year in office and how he attacked democratic values and institutions, such as the courts, the media, law enforcement and his political opponents. The last chapter says that Democrats should avoid using aggressive retaliation, work with conservatives and business leaders to build broad coalitions, change the Republican Party to push out extremists, and make policies that will reduce economic inequality and encourage more people to participate in democracy.

At first, the book does a good job of using comparative analysis to explain how American politics works. It shows that the US is not free from the trends of democratic collapse seen in Hungary, Turkey, Venezuela and other places. The book makes a significant theoretical addition by explaining how a democratically elected leader becomes an autocrat by taking over state institutions, as explained in chapter four. The normative suggestions of mutual toleration and institutional forbearance provide a good way to deal with the collapse of democracy. Additionally, clarifying the meanings of phrases like gatekeeping, political abdication, mutual toleration, institutional forbearance and the guardrail of democracy makes the writing more scholarly.

Nonetheless, readers should take a number of things into account when they interact with this piece. The book mostly focuses on the attitudes and actions of the political elites, such party leaders and elected officials. It does not give enough attention to the important roles that other parts of society, like the general public, social movements and fundamental economic difficulties, play.

The book also seems to ignore the neoliberal economic framework that has pushed many working-class Americans to the margins. Stagnant wages, weakened labor unions and deindustrialization have fueled resentment that authoritarian politicians exploit – but these structural conditions receive little sustained attention in the analysis.

The framing of the book sometimes focuses disproportionately on the norm-breaking of Republicans. A more analytically complete account would acknowledge that democratic erosion has also involved Democrats – including the invocation of the nuclear option for judicial appointments and organizational weakening in many regions of the country. The very framework suggested by Levitsky and Ziblatt implies that the loss of mutual toleration is a bipartisan phenomenon; applying it across parties on equal measures would be a strength rather than a weakness to their argument.

In addition, although the authors contribute significantly to the literature on democratic government, the level of methodological rigor of the book could be supplemented with more systematic comparative data. The use of case selection as illustrated by the authors is effective in accessibility but exposes the causal argument to criticism in terms of selection bias.

Finally, the book’s focus on elite norm erosion as the primary mechanism of democratic breakdown may not travel well beyond the United States and Western Europe. In regions where coups and military intervention remain live threats, the framework requires significant modification. A more explicit engagement with the scope conditions of the argument would have strengthened its cross-national applicability.

In short, How Democracies Die makes a meaningful contribution to the study of democratic erosion and its causes. It also examines possible strategies for protecting democracy from further decline. Pointing out how democracy is deteriorating in the United States serves as a warning to other parts of the world – it shows that even a state widely regarded as a model of modern democracy remains vulnerable. The book emphasizes that to build or maintain a truly democratic government, democratic rules of restraint and reciprocity are as fundamental to democratic survival as any written constitutional rule. The book is mostly worth reading despite its numerous limitations, such as its elite-centric focus and its incomplete interest in structural and economic causes of polarization.

The book has a contribution to a developing literature on democratic backsliding, and implicitly to a growing literature on the topic, such as the works of Nancy Bermeo and Milan Svolik. Levitsky and Ziblatt pay attention to political culture and informal norms where Bermeo predicts executive aggrandizement and Svolik predicts polarization of the elite and the electorate. The book is a valuable addition to quite a few of the comparative backsliding literature and not a substitute to them. Furthermore, the book remains relevant to the contemporary political moment. Many of the trends of which the authors were warning have been hastened by the second Trump administration, which began in January 2025: the encroachment of the executive upon the independence of the judiciary, the use of the state apparatus against political adversaries, and the further weakening of informal norms that once constrained the actions of the president. Also, the structure of the book is analytically portable, i.e. the patterns it has identified are visible today in Hungary, Tunisia and Georgia, among others.

The book will be of most interest to the students of comparative politics and American political development and to the general readers who want to obtain a historically solid introduction to the fragility of democracy. However, it may not be empirical enough to satisfy those who seek a quantitative or structural explanation of the breakdown of democracy.