Narrator: On the morning of September 11, 1973, Hawker Hunter jets screamed across the sky above Santiago, Chile. Their target was La Moneda, the presidential palace, where the democratically elected president, Salvador Allende, was barricaded inside. Just hours earlier, he had delivered a defiant radio address, hoping his supporters would rise to defend their democracy. But the military had turned against him. The palace was bombed, Allende was dead, and Chilean democracy was extinguished in a swift, violent military coup.

For decades, this was the image of how democracies died: with generals in the streets and tanks surrounding the halls of power. But what if the end of democracy no longer arrives with a bang? What if it dies slowly, not at the hands of generals, but by the actions of elected leaders who use the very institutions of democracy to subvert it? In their book, How Democracies Die, political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt argue that this is the new, more insidious threat facing the world today. They provide a chilling analysis of the warning signs and a crucial guide for how to recognize and resist the slow, deliberate dismantling of democratic norms.

Narrator: The classic military coup, like the one in Chile, has become rare. Today, the path to authoritarianism is often paved with elections. Elected leaders, once in office, gradually dismantle the democratic system from within. The process is deceptive because it maintains a veneer of legality and democracy.

Consider the case of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela. In 1998, he was elected president as a political outsider, promising to build a more "authentic" democracy for the poor. He used his popular mandate to rewrite the constitution, and he continued to win elections. Yet, after surviving a coup attempt in 2002, his government grew steadily more repressive. He packed the supreme court with loyalists, shut down critical television stations, arrested opposition figures, and eventually eliminated presidential term limits. Each step was incremental, often justified by a crisis or the need to fight "enemies of the people." There was no single moment of rupture, no storming of the palace. Yet, by 2017, Venezuela was widely recognized as an autocracy. The chilling part is that many citizens didn't see it happening. A 2011 survey found that 51 percent of Venezuelans still rated their country as highly democratic, even as its core institutions were being hollowed out. This is the modern playbook: authoritarians use the ballot box to gain power and then slowly, methodically, kick away the democratic ladder they climbed.

Narrator: Democracies are not just protected by their citizens; they are protected by their political parties. Levitsky and Ziblatt argue that one of the most important functions of a political party is to act as a "gatekeeper," filtering out extremist demagogues and preventing them from gaining access to mainstream power. When these gatekeepers fail, democracy is in peril.

The authors use Aesop's fable of the Horse and the Stag to illustrate this danger. A horse, seeking revenge on a stag, allows a hunter to place a bit in its mouth and a saddle on its back to defeat its rival. After the victory, the horse asks the hunter to remove the gear, but the hunter refuses, preferring to keep the horse under his control. This is the trap of the "fateful alliance." In the 1920s and 30s, establishment conservatives in Italy and Germany formed alliances with Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler, respectively. They believed they could control these charismatic outsiders and use their popular appeal for their own ends. They profoundly miscalculated, and in their quest for short-term advantage, they handed the reins of power to men who would destroy democracy itself.

In contrast, successful gatekeeping saved democracy in other European nations. In 1930s Belgium, when the fascist Rex party surged in popularity, the mainstream Catholic Party refused to form any alliance with them. Instead, they formed a grand coalition with their traditional rivals, the Socialists and Liberals, to isolate the extremists and defend the democratic system. This act of prioritizing democratic stability over partisan gain was a crucial act of gatekeeping that kept an authoritarian threat at bay.

Narrator: A constitution, no matter how well-written, is not enough to guarantee a democracy's survival. The authors argue that stable democracies rely on two crucial unwritten rules, or norms, that act as "soft guardrails": mutual toleration and institutional forbearance.

Mutual toleration is the idea that political opponents are not enemies. As long as they play by the rules, they are accepted as legitimate rivals who have an equal right to compete for and hold power. Institutional forbearance is the act of self-restraint—avoiding actions that, while technically legal, violate the spirit of the law to gain a partisan advantage. For example, a president could legally pardon all of their political allies, but forbearance dictates they should not. A congressional majority could legally refuse to hold hearings for any judicial nominee from the opposing party's president, but forbearance prevents such gridlock.

These two norms are intertwined. When politicians stop seeing their rivals as legitimate (a failure of toleration), they are more likely to use every legal tool at their disposal to stop them (a failure of forbearance). This leads to a downward spiral of "constitutional hardball," where institutions are weaponized and politics becomes a zero-sum war. The Weimar Republic in Germany had a technically brilliant constitution, but it collapsed because its political actors lacked a shared commitment to these unwritten rules.

Narrator: The United States was not born with these democratic norms intact. The early republic was a period of intense partisan warfare, where Federalists and Republicans viewed each other as existential threats. The issue of slavery shattered any nascent norms, leading directly to the Civil War.

Paradoxically, the authors argue that the long period of relative political stability and civility in the 20th century was built on a profoundly undemocratic arrangement. After the Civil War, the Compromise of 1877 effectively ended Reconstruction by pulling federal troops out of the South. This allowed Southern Democrats to re-establish white supremacy and systematically disenfranchise African American voters. By taking the explosive issue of racial equality off the national political agenda, Democrats and Republicans were able to find common ground and develop the norms of mutual toleration and forbearance. In essence, America's democratic guardrails were fortified, but at the tragic cost of de-democratizing the entire South and excluding millions of Black citizens from the political process. This uncomfortable truth reveals that the stability many Americans took for granted had a deeply problematic and exclusionary foundation.

Narrator: The erosion of America's democratic norms did not begin in 2016. Levitsky and Ziblatt trace its origins back decades, arguing that Newt Gingrich's rise in the 1980s and 90s was a critical turning point. Gingrich pioneered a new style of "politics as warfare," encouraging Republicans to abandon compromise and to use language that cast Democrats not as opponents, but as corrupt, sick, and traitorous enemies.

This set the stage for an era of escalating constitutional hardball. The impeachment of Bill Clinton, the mid-decade redistricting in Texas under Tom DeLay, and the rise of the Tea Party movement—which questioned the very legitimacy and "Americanness" of President Barack Obama—all signaled a severe decay in mutual toleration. The ultimate breakdown of institutional forbearance came in 2016, when Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to even hold a hearing for Merrick Garland, President Obama's Supreme Court nominee. This was an unprecedented move that shattered a long-standing norm. By the time Donald Trump arrived on the political scene, the guardrails of American democracy were already severely corroded.

Narrator: Faced with a norm-breaking opponent, the temptation is to fight fire with fire. The authors warn that this is a fatal mistake. Adopting the scorched-earth tactics of an authoritarian rival only accelerates the death spiral of democracy. They point to Venezuela, where the opposition's attempts to oust Chávez through a coup and general strikes backfired, allowing him to brand them as antidemocratic and justify his own power grabs.

Instead, the path to saving democracy requires a broad, pro-democratic coalition. This means Democrats must be willing to form alliances with principled conservatives and any Republicans willing to defend democratic institutions over party loyalty. The goal should not be to defeat Republicans, but to defeat the authoritarian threat by isolating extremists within the GOP. This coalition must use the existing institutions—the courts, Congress, and elections—to resist abuses of power while steadfastly adhering to democratic rules themselves. To truly fix the problem, however, America must address the root causes of its polarization: deep-seated racial and cultural divisions and growing economic inequality. Reforming the Republican party away from white nationalism and implementing universal social policies that bridge economic divides are essential long-term projects for restoring the health of the republic.

Narrator: The single most important takeaway from How Democracies Die is that the survival of democracy is not guaranteed by constitutions or institutions alone. It depends on a shared commitment to the unwritten rules of the game: treating opponents with respect and exercising power with restraint. These norms are the fragile guardrails that keep political competition from descending into a fight to the death.

Donald Trump was not the cause of America's democratic crisis, but a symptom of its advanced decay. The challenge his presidency revealed is profound: Can a society as deeply divided as the United States rediscover the norms of mutual toleration and forbearance? Levitsky and Ziblatt's work is not just a historical analysis but an urgent call to action. It argues that the fate of American democracy now rests in the hands of its citizens and their willingness to defend its fundamental principles, even—and especially—when it is difficult.