RaveForeign PolicyTwo Harvard University scholars, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, have spent their careers studying how democracies have unraveled, from Germany in the 1930s to Venezuela in the 2000s ... In How Democracies Die, they turn their sights to America and conclude that there is cause for alarm: The election of Donald Trump is merely a symptom of a deeper, decades-long deterioration of American politics and democratic norms ... Political polarization and the unrestrained exercise of legal authority are the two key killers, Levitsky and Ziblatt argue. The idea that political opponents are legitimate, and that governmental powers must be handled with restraint, is the glue that keeps a democracy intact ... The authors offer a chilling diagnosis but few practical remedies, other than getting politicians to somehow transcend the partisan divide and build new coalitions.
