How Democracies Die: What History Reveals about Our Future.

• Author: Levistsky, Steven

How Democracies Die is an explicit account of carefully arranged historical facts about the processes and observed failings of democratic institutions in selected countries of reference, including Chile, Argentina, Brazil, and Venezuela -an analytical narrative of the anti-democratic values and attitudes that the authors believe are responsible for the eventual liquidation of democratic governance systems in those countries. The impetus behind this very timely publication is the perceived threat that the authors feel, rightly or wrongly, that the Trump Presidency posed for American democracy -an expressed concern that is palpable throughout all the pages of the book. The authors are of the tacit opinion that if America refuses to halt the denigration of democracy begun by former President

Trump, the implosion of the American democratic governance system is imminent. Levistsky and Ziblatt open the discourse on the future of democracy in the U.S. with a rhetorical question as to whether American democracy is in grave danger; in their attempt to provide an answer, the authors examine the contemporary experiences of other democracies in order to establish whether democracy is under threat worldwide.

There are nine chapters in the book. In chapter 1, the authors utilize Aesop's fable of "The Horse, the Stag and the Hunter" to abstract several instances of outsiders who were invited to power in Germany (Adolf Hitler), Brazil (Getilio Vargas), Peru (Alberto Fujimori), and Venezuela (Hugo Chavez)-all fateful alliances that turned sour in the end. However, in the case of the United States, the authors are of the belief that both the Democrats and the Republicans had-until 2016-succeeded in keeping extremists with public support away from the mainstream of party politics (pp. 11-32). Chapter 2, titled "Gate-keeping in America," brings to fore the historical records of how extreme demagogues at different points in America's political life have challenged its democratic system and how the built-in protective mechanisms of American democracy have shut them out of power on account of the manifestly anti-democratic values they espoused (pp. 33-52).

In Chapter 3, the authors illustrate the processes within the Republican party that aided the emergence of an 'extremist outsider,' Donald Trump, as the party's presidential candidate, noting that the party gatekeepers had become 'shells of what they once were,' a development they explain as a consequence of...