How Democracies Die

In 2016 the United States experienced a clear instance of norm-breaking, when Senate Republicans refused to consider President Barack Obama’s nominee for the Supreme Court. While that move was “a radical departure from historical precedent,” the roots of that action extend further back than 2016 (146).

To explore the origins of the assault on democratic norms, Levitsky and Ziblatt go back to the 1970s, when a Republican congressman named Newt Gingrich encouraged other Republicans to reject norms of civility and bipartisan cooperation in favor of a more aggressive approach to politics. This approach was soon formalized through training tapes made by Gingrich and disseminated through the party. In this way Gingrich capitalized on a wave of polarization and dissatisfaction in the Republican base, transforming American politics in the process. Part of this process was to undermine the norms of mutual toleration, by casting Democrats as unpatriotic and sick, and of institutional forbearance, by normalizing a pattern of behavior whereby House Republicans refused to compromise with Democrats, even if it meant shutting down the government.

This “politics as warfare” intensified in the 2008 presidential election, when Republican politicians adopted this language to refer to Barack Obama before and after his victory. As the authors note, these attacks were different from previous instances of intolerance, in that they were widely accepted by both Republican voters and leading Republicans officials.