Good evening, everyone. My name is betsy atkins. On behalf of harvard bookstore, id like to welcome you to cambridge public library. Im extremely pleased to have Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt with us. Please check out more Upcoming Library programming and be sure to join our email list to learn about the event series, and please visit us online at harvard. Com events. Id also like to thank tonights cosponsor, mass humanities supporting programs that use history, literature, philosophy and the other disciplines to enhance and improve civic life for the people of massachusetts. Learn more at masscommunities. Org. Tonights talk will conclude with time for your questions. Please note that this talk is being recorded by cspan, and during q a your questions will be recorded. To ask a question, please come to the mic at the front of this aisle to my left. Following q a, there will be a book signing here on stage. The signing line will form down the aisle to my right, the end of which may extend out into the hallway, and the line will come onto the stage and exit out the door to my right. Books can be purchased outside the lecture hall, and how democracies die is 20 off tonight. Thank you for making purchases from harvard bookstore, an independent bookstore, and youre insuring the future of this series. Please turn off or silence your cell phones. Now im very pleased to introduce tonights speakers. Steven levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt are professors of government at harvard university. Professor levitskys research focuses on latin america and the developing world. Professor ziblatt are studies europe from the 19th century to the present, and hes the author most recently of conservative parties and the birth of democracy. In her recent New York Times review of their book how democracies die, its noted that levitsky and ziblatt show how democracies have collapsed elsewhere not just through violent coups, but more commonly through a gradual slide into authoritarianism and praises how democracies die is a lucid and essential guide to what can happen here. Please join me in welcoming Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt. [applause] hello, everyone. Its really wonderful to be here. To see such a big crowd. Thank you to the harvard bookstore, mass humanities and also the cambridge public library. I cant think of a more appropriate place to discuss the current state of our democracy than in a free public library, so its really great to be here. [applause] so steve and i are going to kind of tag team tonight. Im going to start off and then hand things over to steve. And what were going to do tonight is talk about the motivation behind our book and some of the things weve learned while working on this book. So i want to begin really first just by talking about the motivations that led to the, to this project. So we both teach in the harvard government department. Were colleagues. Weve taught together and researched together for 15 years. We study democracy and crisis, authoritarianism in other parts of the world. This is what weve spent our careers doing. We were motivated to write this book because steve and i, like many of you perhaps, watched the 20152016 president ial election first with a kind of sense of uneasiness, growing disbelief and eventually shock at the tenor of political debate. But since we have spent our careers studying democracies in crisis this other countries, me in europe in the 19th and 20th centuries, steve in latin america the 1960s to the present, there was another layer of trepidation. At first it was really just small echoes. You know, we saw during the president ial election the republican nominee rail against the media. , threaten to not accept the results of elections, accuse his political rival of being a criminal, threatening to lock up his former rival, if elected. And finally, condoning violence at political rallies. So many people thought these were just words, you know . In some sense, they were. But steve and i were both increasingly nervous because we recognized that these are really hallmarks, these four things that happened during the president ial election going after the media, talking about elections in this way, criticizing a rival in this way, condoning violence these were hallmarks of authoritarians in other countries. And moreover, no major president ial Party Candidate in the United States in at least the 20th century but even longer, had ever done any of these things, had ever behaved this way. But many candidates we recognize for Political Office in other countries who eventually became authoritarian leaders had behaved this way. So both of us had this uncanny feeling that we had seen this movie before elsewhere, and out rarely ends well. It rarely ends well. So we decided we had to write this book. We wanted to draw upon the knowledge we have to look at democracies that have confronted and overcome these crises in other places where countries have overcome and succumbed, to draw lessons from these experiences to try to understand our own countrys predicament. So while working on the book, we came to some conclusions that differ, i think, from how many today think about the trump presidency. We came to realize the problem facing our political system today is not just donald trump alone. Its not just his outrageous comments, his confusing or unusual psychology, attempting to focus on, you know, the most outrageous latest tweet or political gossip, but at some level we realize this is a distraction. Its important to keep your eye on the ball. At the end of the day, we came to realize as we worked on this book that donald trump was not just the cause of our political systems problems, he was in many ways a symptom. He was a symptom of deeper, underlying problems in our political system. We realized, in short, that the problem runs deeper than trump. So is tonight what were going to do is talk about three discoveries we made in the process of writing our book that led us to this conclusion that the problem runs deeper than trump. Im going to first start off by talking about the first discovery, steve will talk about the second and third. Okay. So discover number one discovery number one, the best way the stop authoritarians is to prevent them from coming to power in the first place. Okay, what does this mean . Well, in the context of the United States this means that we have to Pay Attention to not just why donald trump was elected, but also how he ever came to be the nominee of a Major Political party in the first place. So let me elaborate. In the cold war, threequarters of democratic breakdowns around the world happened at the hands of men with guns in the form of military coups. Since the collapse of communism, the world has changed, and most democratic breakdowns arrive at the ballot box through elections. Demagogues come to power i through elections, and once in power, they inflict serious damage on Democratic Political institutions. So really a grave paradox facing democracies today is how does a democracy prevent an autocraticminded demagogue from coming into power and then dismantling those Democratic Institutions that brought him into power in the first place . Throughout most of American History, weve happily avoided this. But it was not because there were no demagogues, and its not because there werent voters who might support demagogues. In fact, we really have a tendency, i think, to whitewash our own history and forget theres really a continuous strand in American History of authoritarians who gain around 30 approval in opinion surveys. So this strand runs from henry ford in the 1920s, the founder of Ford Motor Company who was a famous antisemite, who considered running for president in the 1920s, huey long in the 1930s, joe mccarthy in the 1950s, George Wallace in the 1960s. Gallup poll data really going back to the 1930s shows each of these figures consistently garnered around 30 approval ratings, and this is a number that really runs to todays support, 35 approval for our president. So i dont think its actually too much to say that theres really a continuous perhaps latent strand of authoritarianism running as a subcurrent in american political culture. In some ways, the United States is not unique. This probably applies to most countries. But heres really the point none of these figures i just cited ford, long, wallace none of these figures ever made it close to the presidency. Though they were popular, they were kept far from power. So how and what changed in 2016 . So in the book we emphasize two contributing factors, and im just going to lay them out more schematically. We lay a this out in more detail, of course, in the book. The way we pick our president s has changed. Until 1972 and for the first threequarters of the 20th century president ial candidates were selected by Party Leaders. In a kind of system of gatekeeping or what political scientists have sometimes called peer review, Political Parties who worked up close with the candidates, got together and selected the candidates. These were politicians who would get together, and this is criticize ised, of course, as the kind of smokefilled back room, but these politicians had a big say in picking candidates what this meant was voters, essentially, were you are relevant at the stage of picking candidates. It was Party Leaders who picked candidates. Voters, of course, mattered in a general election, but it was Party Leaders who picked candidates. Now, the system, the smokefilled back room, certainly had downsides. It was exclusive, it wasnt very democratic, sometimes generated mediocre candidates. If you know anything about warren g. Harding, hes a type of prototype of somebody who emerged out of the smokefilled room who was mediocre. All systems have advantages and disadvantage ises. An advantage of this system was that it worked well, in fact, perfectly, in keeping extremists from ever becoming viable candidates for president. It was a screening system, a filtration system, a gatekeeping system that effectively kept demagogues out. Now, we all know that the american political system and American Society changed dramatically in 1968, the tragic year of 1968. The way we select our candidates also changed in 1968. Ing the president ial system was opened up. The smokefilled rooms were opened up. Primaries were made binding. Voters could now select the candidates for office. The general election was now preceded by the nearly continuous primary season that we all know that goes on for, you know, months and months and months where the voters had a say in picking the candidates. Now, this certainly was a more open system, but its interesting. There were two political scientists who wrote in the early 70s who warned that the fall of this filtration system is could also open the door to demagogues. Now, to be clear, we dont advocate going back to that old system. But at the same time, we have to recognize the Current System is doubleedged. It is more open, and so what this means is that if a demagogue ever runs for office, the road to nomination is much clearer. Now, its also true that in the 1980s the Democratic Party introduced a system of superdelegates where elected officials hold, held extra sway in the selection of candidates. This kind of contained some elements of the old system, creating a more complicated Obstacle Course on the way to the nomination. But republicans never adopted this system. They never adopted superdelegates. So the door was much more open. So this meant that if a demagogue ever decided to run for president , especially in the Republican Party, this was a much more open road to gain the nomination. And this is exactly what happened in 2016. Donald trump, modernday demagogue, became the nominee of the Republican Party. So theres a second factor though that we also emphasize in the book. It prevents someone, that shapes someone with authoritarian tendencies can reach this position of power and come into office. Inin many ways, its more cruci. Because, after all, donald trump won the nomination, but this didnt mean he was necessarily going to become president. First of all, Hillary Clinton could have beat him, but the second point that we emphasize in the book just as importantly was that it was absolutely imperative for the Republican Party to play a role here. There was an imperative role for Republican Party allies of donald trump to play. Heres really the central pivot of the story. Authoritarians come to power not just electoral authoritarians come to power not just via elections, but also with the enabling aid of Establishment Party allies. So throughout history this repeats itself. Italy in the 1920s, germany in the 1930s, venezuela in the 1990s. This is really a crucial test. When a demagogue comes along who clearly violates democratic norms and gets close to power, one of the last offramps that determines whether or not establishment politicians, party allies finally break with the demagogue, with the autocrat in the making, do they draw a line in the sand and say beyond this we will not go, or do they abdicate. Do they overlook the violations. Do they let party trump their commitment to democratic norms. In effect, do they form a Faustian Bargain allowing their ideological ally into power . Do they enable the authoritarian . Because when elected authoritarians get to power in this last stage, its nearly always because mainstream politicians out of miscalculation or opportunism let them in the door. The enabling role of the Republican Party is actually not unique. This happens remarkably often. In venezuela in the 1990s hugo chavez got his political start by being given a big boost from a longtime, mainstream fixture of venezuelan politics who freed chavez from jail, gave chavez a boost in legitimacy, and he was hoping to kind of tap into some of the Energy Around chavez. He was an older politician. His time had passed, and within several years chavez was president. And even better examples, italy in the early 1920s. Benito mussolini was a complete outcast of the mainstream, but a longstanding, prominent politician saw mussolini on the horizon and decided to include him on his party list in the early 20s to tap into some of the energy on the far right. Within a year, mussolini was prime minister. In germany, a similar story unfolds. The leader of the german conservative party, the head of a kind of very elitist, aristocratic party allied himself with hitler in the late 20s, held rallies together, tried to draw on hitlers grass roots appeal to try to shore up this relatively elitist party. But this backfired. The conservatives disintegrated, hitler grew in prominence. By january 1933 he was in power, and this fateful moment in january 1933 when hitler was named chancellor, von poppen, a leading statesman at the time, assured his conservative allies, dont worry, this is a quote within two months well have him into a corner, and hell squeal. And every instance the mainstream or the establishment politicses opened the door, abdicate, fail in their gatekeeping function and let the extremist in the door. In every instance, the mainstream politicians make the same mistake. They form this Faustian Bargain thinking they can contain the outsider. In every instance, the Faustian Bargain backfires. The same thing happened in 2016; republicans enabled donald trump. Many leading republicans, even after candidate trump won the nomination, openly despised and were offended by trump could have crossed party lines. They could have but didnt, for example, endorse Hillary Clinton. They could have put democracy ahead of country ahead of party. This could have made a difference. Now, im sure some of you are thinking, well, how realistic is that . Could that really happen . Would politicians really have done this . Turns out we dont have to look very far to find evidence this is possible. If you look to the 2017 french president ial election, the conservative republican Party Candidate in that country didnt make it to the second round. Its a tworound election system. Didnt make it to the second is round. In the second round, the question is would he endorse marine le pen, the populist demagogue, or would he support macron who had been a minister in the former socialist government. He, although he was idealogically closer to le pen, he endorsed marrone. In the macron. In the United States, the republicans did not do this. They let our le pen in the door. Donald trump was elected president , and once an authoritarians in the door, its a changed game. Steves going to tell us [applause] so will our constitution save us . Thank you, by the way, for coming. I have to calm down. I got feedback from my wife after we gave a talk in brookline last week, and she said stop pounding repeatedly on the lectern. [laughter] youre not nikita khrushchev. So im going to try i get a little worked up. [laughter] will our constitution save us. Our second discovery is not necessarily. Americans have a lot of faith in our constitutional system of checks and balances, and for good reason. We have the oldest, we have the most successful constitution in the history of the world. Our system of checks and balances contained andrew jackson, fdr, it contained nixon, why shouldnt it contain trump. But constitutions dont just work automatically. If they did, argentina which adopted a constitution