Levitsky, S., & Ziblatt, D. (2018) | References

What This Research Found

Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt's How Democracies Die represents the most influential analysis of democratic erosion in a generation, drawing on decades of comparative research to identify the patterns by which democracies collapse—and how citizens might recognise and resist the process before it's too late.

The death of democracy by a thousand cuts: The book's central insight challenges common assumptions about how democracies fail. We imagine tanks in the streets, generals seizing power, constitutions suspended. But Levitsky and Ziblatt demonstrate that in the contemporary era, democracies rarely die so dramatically. Instead, they are slowly strangled by elected leaders who use democratic institutions against democracy itself. Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey—each rose to power through elections, then systematically dismantled the constraints that might limit their authority. Elections continued; formal institutions operated. But the substance of democracy was hollowed out while its shell remained. This makes democratic erosion far harder to recognise and resist than a sudden coup. There's no single moment when citizens must decide to accept or resist; instead, there's a gradual normalisation of previously unthinkable violations.

The four indicators of authoritarian behaviour: Levitsky and Ziblatt identify four behavioural warning signs that, based on their research, consistently predict authoritarian governance. First, rejection of democratic rules: leaders who question the legitimacy of elections, suggest they might not accept unfavourable results, or express willingness to violate constitutional norms. Second, denial of opponents' legitimacy: treating political rivals not merely as wrong but as criminals, traitors, or existential threats who should be imprisoned or exiled rather than competed against. Third, toleration or encouragement of violence: ties to armed groups, tacit endorsement of supporter violence, or refusal to condemn violence from one's own side. Fourth, readiness to curtail civil liberties: threats against press freedom, critics, or opposition activities. These indicators appear across vastly different political contexts because they emerge from the logic of authoritarian power itself, not from specific ideologies.

Democracy's unwritten constitution: The book's most lasting contribution may be its identification of the unwritten norms that sustain democratic institutions. Formal rules—constitutions, laws, regulations—matter. But Levitsky and Ziblatt demonstrate that formal rules are never sufficient; they can always be gamed, exploited, or reinterpreted by those determined to do so. What actually makes democracy work are two unwritten norms: mutual toleration and institutional forbearance.

Mutual toleration means accepting that political opponents, however much we disagree with them, have an equal right to participate in the political system. It means treating rivals as adversaries to be defeated in fair competition, not enemies to be destroyed. It means accepting that if they win, they have the right to govern—and that their supporters are fellow citizens, not traitors.

Institutional forbearance means restraining from the full exercise of legal powers in ways that would violate democratic spirit. Politicians may have the constitutional authority to pack courts, gerrymander districts, block appointments, or exploit procedural loopholes—but forbearance means choosing not to use such powers, or using them sparingly, because doing so would undermine the system's fairness. Forbearance means accepting that just because you can do something doesn't mean you should.

When these norms erode, formal institutions prove surprisingly vulnerable. Constitutions cannot anticipate every possible abuse; they depend on leaders who exercise restraint. When restraint disappears, democracy's rules become weapons rather than protections.

The erosion spiral: Levitsky and Ziblatt document how norm erosion becomes self-reinforcing. When one side abandons mutual toleration—treating opponents as illegitimate rather than merely wrong—the other side feels justified in responding in kind. When one side exploits institutional powers beyond previous limits, the other side feels compelled to match or exceed them when they return to power. Each violation justifies the next, ratcheting the system toward mutual destruction. Moderates who counsel restraint are marginalised as naive or disloyal. The center cannot hold because holding the center requires norms that have already collapsed.

This spiral is accelerated by polarisation, particularly what political scientists call "affective polarisation"—visceral animosity toward political opponents that transcends policy disagreement. When Americans increasingly view the opposing party not just as wrong but as dangerous, as genuinely threatening to the nation's wellbeing, mutual toleration becomes psychologically impossible. You cannot accept as legitimate someone you believe is destroying your country. And if the other side winning would be catastrophic, using every available tool to prevent that outcome seems not just justified but necessary.

Gatekeeping failures: The authors examine how democracies have historically protected themselves from authoritarian capture through "gatekeeping"—the process by which political parties, media institutions, and civic organisations screen out extremists and norm violators before they can access power. In functioning democracies, party leaders refuse to nominate candidates who display authoritarian tendencies, even if those candidates might be electorally successful. Media treats norm violations as disqualifying rather than entertaining. Civic organisations maintain standards that exclude bad-faith actors.

When gatekeeping fails—when parties prioritise short-term electoral gain over democratic integrity, when media normalises previously unacceptable behaviour, when civic organisations are captured or intimidated—authoritarian actors gain access to power and the system's defences collapse. Levitsky and Ziblatt trace how gatekeeping has functioned (and failed) across multiple democracies, showing that the pattern is consistent: once gatekeepers fail, the erosion accelerates dramatically.

How This Research Is Used in the Book

Levitsky and Ziblatt's framework appears in Narcissus and the Child as the definitive analysis of how narcissistic dynamics—familiar from family systems—operate at political scale. In Chapter 12: Historical Narcissus, their work illuminates why narcissistic leaders can capture democratic systems:

"Narcissistic capture requires institutional weakness. Functioning democracies with strong institutions, free press, independent courts, and civil society organisations resist narcissistic takeover. But when institutions are weak, corrupted, or discredited, narcissistic individuals can rapidly consolidate power."

This passage connects individual narcissistic pathology to political outcome. The same personality structure that creates abusive family dynamics—the grandiosity, the inability to tolerate criticism, the demand for absolute loyalty, the reality distortion—produces predictable political patterns when combined with power. Levitsky and Ziblatt's research explains why: the norms that constrain this behaviour erode, and formal institutions alone cannot compensate.

The book draws directly on Levitsky and Ziblatt's identification of mutual toleration and institutional forbearance as democracy's essential guardrails:

"Informal norms—respect for truth, loyalty to constitution over party, acceptance of election results, tolerance of opposition, commitment to pluralism—create cultural antibodies against narcissistic leadership. Once eroded, these norms are difficult to restore."

In Chapter 14: The Bankrupt Society, Levitsky and Ziblatt's analysis of democratic dysfunction through polarisation illuminates how narcissistic dynamics corrupt political systems:

"Affective polarisation corrodes democratic governance through multiple mechanisms. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt's How Democracies Die identifies two essential norms sustaining democracy: mutual toleration (accepting opponents' legitimacy) and institutional forbearance (refraining from exercising legal powers that violate democratic spirit). American politics increasingly abandons both norms."

This connects the political analysis to the book's broader argument about narcissism as social phenomenon. The splitting that characterises narcissistic psychology—the inability to hold complexity, the all-or-nothing categorisation of people as good or bad—maps directly onto affective polarisation. The coercive control that characterises narcissistic families parallels the authoritarian leader's systematic dismantling of independent centres of power.

Why This Matters for Survivors

If you experienced narcissistic abuse, particularly in childhood, Levitsky and Ziblatt's research offers both validation and crucial insight—because the patterns they describe at national scale operated in your family.

You've seen this playbook before. The authoritarian leader who demands absolute loyalty, designates enemies, punishes dissent, exploits every rule while violating every norm, and systematically distorts reality—this is the narcissistic parent made political. The four indicators of authoritarian behaviour that Levitsky and Ziblatt identify (rejecting rules, denying opponents' legitimacy, tolerating violence, curtailing liberties) appear in narcissistic family systems too. The narcissistic parent who changed rules arbitrarily, who treated dissenting family members as enemies to be crushed rather than relatives who disagreed, who tolerated (or inflicted) aggression against scapegoated members, who controlled information and restricted contact with outside perspectives—this parent was operating as an authoritarian within the family system. Your nervous system learned to recognise these patterns; that's why political developments can feel so personally threatening.

The norms your family destroyed were essential. Levitsky and Ziblatt's identification of mutual toleration and forbearance as democracy's guardrails illuminates what your narcissistic family lacked. In healthy families, members can disagree without becoming enemies—this is mutual toleration at family scale. Children can have different opinions, make different choices, become different people than parents expected, without being cast out or designated as problems. In healthy families, parents don't exploit their authority in every way they could—this is forbearance. Parental power exists to protect and develop children, not to dominate them; the fact that a parent could control every aspect of a child's life doesn't mean they should. Narcissistic families destroy both norms: difference becomes betrayal, and any power that can be exercised will be. The chaos you experienced wasn't random—it was the predictable result of norm collapse.

Gaslighting operates at both scales. Levitsky and Ziblatt document how authoritarian leaders attack shared reality—claiming that obvious facts are false, that documented events didn't happen, that their opponents are the real authoritarians. This reality distortion serves the same function at political scale that gaslighting serves in abusive relationships: it makes the victim dependent on the abuser's version of events, unable to trust their own perceptions or organise effective resistance. If you experienced gaslighting in your family, you understand how this works. The authoritarian leader's supporters aren't simply deceived; like the partner of a narcissist, they've been systematically trained to distrust external reality and rely on the leader's version. They're in a trauma bond with someone who has colonised their sense of what is true.

Isolation enables control. Levitsky and Ziblatt's analysis of how authoritarian leaders attack independent institutions—courts, media, civil society—parallels the narcissistic abuser's isolation of victims. The narcissistic parent who limits contact with extended family, sabotages friendships, and controls information flow is implementing the same strategy as the authoritarian who attacks the press, purges the judiciary, and delegitimises civil society. Both understand that independent perspectives enable resistance. When there's no one to reality-check the abuser's narrative, no institution that can constrain their behaviour, no alternative source of meaning or belonging, the victim has nowhere to turn except back to the abuser. Understanding this parallel helps explain why leaving abusive relationships is so difficult: the abuser has systematically destroyed the infrastructure that would enable departure.

Your sensitivity is expertise. Survivors of narcissistic abuse often recognise authoritarian patterns before others do. This isn't paranoia—it's pattern recognition developed through painful experience. You've seen how the charm masks cruelty, how the confident certainty masks fragile brittleness, how the professed concern for "the people" (or "the family") masks contempt for anyone who fails to provide sufficient admiration. When political leaders display these patterns, your alarm system activates—not because you're oversensitive but because you've been trained by experience to recognise danger. Levitsky and Ziblatt's framework provides language for what you're perceiving, validating your recognition as grounded in documented patterns rather than personal overreaction.

Clinical Implications

For psychiatrists, psychologists, and trauma-informed healthcare providers, Levitsky and Ziblatt's framework offers essential context for treating patients affected by political developments that resonate with their abuse histories.

Political activation is clinically significant. Patients who report extreme distress about political events—difficulty functioning, intrusive thoughts, hypervigilance, sleep disturbance—may be experiencing trauma activation rather than simply holding strong political opinions. When political patterns mirror the patient's abuse history (coercive control, reality distortion, scapegoating, demands for absolute loyalty), the political content can trigger trauma responses. These patients aren't being dramatic; their nervous systems are responding to genuinely similar stimuli. Clinical assessment should explore whether political distress connects to personal trauma history.

Validate the parallel without pathologising political engagement. Patients who connect their political concerns to their abuse experiences are perceiving genuine structural parallels—the mechanisms of authoritarian control do operate similarly at family and national scales. Validation of this perception is appropriate. However, clinicians should help patients distinguish between perception (accurately recognising patterns) and response (managing activation without being overwhelmed). The goal is neither to dismiss political concerns as purely personal projection nor to reinforce catastrophic thinking, but to help patients maintain accurate perception while developing sustainable coping.

Address splitting in political reasoning. Patients with trauma histories, particularly those involving narcissistic abuse, may apply the all-or-nothing thinking they learned in abusive systems to political analysis. Everyone on one side is good; everyone on the other is evil. This black-and-white thinking, while understandable given their history, can increase polarisation stress and interpersonal conflict. Therapeutic work can help patients develop more nuanced political thinking without dismissing their legitimate concerns—recognising that people can be wrong without being monsters, that complex problems rarely have simple solutions, and that one's own side can make mistakes.

Family-of-origin work may have political resonance. Processing narcissistic family dynamics may spontaneously connect to patients' political concerns—they may recognise their parent in political figures, or see national events as family drama scaled up. This can be therapeutically productive if handled skillfully. The political material can provide distance that makes family material more accessible; the family material can illuminate why political events feel so threatening. Clinicians should be prepared for this connection to emerge and use it therapeutically rather than steering patients away from the political content.

Boundary-setting transfers across scales. The same skills that help survivors establish boundaries with narcissistic family members—limiting contact, not engaging with provocations, protecting one's own perception—can help manage political distress. Limiting news consumption, curating social media, declining to engage in certain political conversations, and protecting space for activities unrelated to politics parallel the low-contact or no-contact strategies that help survivors manage family relationships. Clinicians can help patients apply familiar skills to new contexts.

Broader Implications

Levitsky and Ziblatt's work extends far beyond individual psychology to illuminate patterns in families, organisations, and societies that connect democratic erosion to interpersonal abuse dynamics.

The Family as Micro-Democracy (or Micro-Autocracy)

Families operate as governance systems. Healthy families function somewhat like democracies: parents hold authority but exercise it with restraint; family members have voice and their perspectives matter; disagreement is tolerated; rules are relatively stable and fairly applied. Narcissistic families operate like autocracies: power is concentrated and unchecked; dissent is punished; rules change arbitrarily; some members are designated as valued while others are scapegoated; reality is whatever the dominant figure says it is. Levitsky and Ziblatt's framework helps explain why children of narcissistic families may struggle with democratic citizenship—they learned governance patterns that are fundamentally authoritarian.

Intergenerational Trauma and Political Vulnerability

Communities with histories of authoritarian governance or collective trauma may be more vulnerable to narcissistic political leadership—and may also produce more families operating through authoritarian dynamics. The patterns reinforce each other: societies that experienced totalitarianism may carry trauma that manifests in families; families operating through coercive control produce citizens familiar with and potentially susceptible to authoritarian appeals. Understanding these connections helps explain why some societies cycle through authoritarianism while others maintain democratic stability, and suggests that family-level interventions may have political implications.

Organisational Parallels

Levitsky and Ziblatt's framework applies to organisations—corporations, churches, nonprofits, social movements—that can develop authoritarian cultures despite operating within democratic societies. The same patterns appear: leaders who demand loyalty over competence, who designate enemies and scapegoats, who cannot tolerate dissent, who distort reality to maintain their position. Organisations with narcissistic leadership display miniature versions of democratic erosion: formal rules exist but are selectively enforced; independent centres of power (HR, legal, board oversight) are captured or neutered; members learn that safety requires compliance, not contribution. Understanding these parallels helps identify unhealthy organisational cultures and suggests interventions.

Media Literacy and Manipulation Recognition

Levitsky and Ziblatt's documentation of how authoritarian leaders manipulate media and create alternative realities connects to the cognitive dissonance and reality distortion that characterise narcissistic abuse. The same skills that help survivors recognise gaslighting—trusting their own perceptions, seeking external validation, documenting events, noticing patterns of distortion—help citizens resist authoritarian media manipulation. Media literacy education that draws on understanding of interpersonal manipulation may be more effective than approaches focused purely on evaluating sources.

Protecting Democratic Norms as Trauma Prevention

If authoritarian governance produces trauma at population scale—which historical evidence clearly suggests—then protecting democratic norms is a public health intervention. Levitsky and Ziblatt's framework suggests that maintaining mutual toleration and institutional forbearance prevents not just political dysfunction but the mass psychological harm that authoritarian systems inflict. The child raised under totalitarianism, the citizen living under dictatorship, the employee working for a narcissistic boss—all experience psychological damage that could be prevented by maintaining healthy governance norms. This reframes democratic citizenship not just as political right but as collective self-protection.

Limitations and Considerations

While Levitsky and Ziblatt's analysis is foundational, several limitations inform its application.

The analogy has limits. While the structural parallels between narcissistic families and authoritarian politics are real, the scale difference matters. Democratic erosion affects millions; family abuse affects individuals. Political authoritarianism may involve mass violence, war, genocide; narcissistic parenting, while damaging, rarely reaches this scale. Comparing one's family to Nazi Germany risks minimising historical atrocities. The analogy illuminates mechanisms; it should not be taken to equate consequences.

Not all political disagreement is authoritarian. Levitsky and Ziblatt's indicators are specific: rejecting democratic rules, denying opponents' legitimacy, tolerating violence, curtailing liberties. Strong policy disagreement, partisan competition, even hostile rhetoric don't necessarily indicate authoritarianism. Abuse survivors may be prone to pattern-match where patterns don't fully exist—seeing every difficult person as a narcissist, every political conflict as democratic erosion. Maintaining discernment requires recognising that their specific indicators, not general unpleasantness, signal danger.

Political polarisation has multiple causes. While Levitsky and Ziblatt document polarisation's role in norm erosion, they don't fully explain polarisation's causes. Economic factors, media fragmentation, demographic change, genuine policy disagreement, and historical grievances all contribute. Framing polarisation purely in psychological terms risks missing structural factors that policy could address. Reducing polarisation requires more than individual psychological change.

The US-centric limitation. While Levitsky and Ziblatt draw on comparative research, their analysis centres American democracy. Democratic norms, institutional design, and political culture vary across countries. Their framework requires adaptation for other contexts—what constitutes forbearance differs between parliamentary and presidential systems, between federations and unitary states, between societies with different historical experiences.

The book doesn't address recovery. Levitsky and Ziblatt diagnose democratic erosion more thoroughly than they prescribe remedies. Their suggestions (gatekeeping, coalition-building, norm restoration) are general rather than specific. How exactly to rebuild mutual toleration after it has collapsed, how to restore forbearance after escalation, how to depolarise a polarised society—these questions remain incompletely answered.

Historical Context

How Democracies Die appeared in January 2018, during a moment of acute concern about democratic institutions in the United States and globally. The authors had been developing their analysis for years—Levitsky's research on "competitive authoritarianism" and Ziblatt's work on how democracies are born and die in Europe—but the political moment gave their scholarship immediate urgency and audience.

The book synthesised decades of comparative political science research that had previously been confined to academic journals. Levitsky and Ziblatt made accessible concepts like democratic norms, gatekeeping, and authoritarian indicators that had long circulated among scholars. Their framework provided citizens with tools to analyse their own political moment through comparative lens—not "is this unprecedented?" but "have we seen this pattern before?"

The book's commercial success—over a million copies sold, months on bestseller lists, translation into dozens of languages—reflected widespread hunger for analytical frameworks that could make sense of disorienting political developments. The authors appeared in major media, testified before Congress, and shaped public discourse about democratic resilience.

Subsequent events—disputed elections, institutional conflicts, and the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol—have only increased the book's relevance. Levitsky and Ziblatt's framework has become standard vocabulary for discussions of democratic health. Their concepts of "guardrails" and their specific indicators of authoritarian behaviour are now routinely invoked in political analysis. Whether democratic erosion continues or reverses, their diagnostic framework will remain essential for recognising the patterns.

The Survivor's Recognition

For those who experienced narcissistic abuse, reading Levitsky and Ziblatt often produces a shock of recognition more usually associated with clinical literature. The authoritarian leader who demands absolute loyalty, who treats dissent as betrayal, who designates enemies and scapegoats, who distorts reality and attacks any source of independent truth—this is the narcissistic parent or partner made political. The mechanisms are the same because domination has a characteristic architecture that recurs wherever someone seeks total control.

The two norms Levitsky and Ziblatt identify as essential to democracy—mutual toleration and forbearance—are precisely what narcissistic systems destroy. In healthy families, as in healthy democracies, people can disagree without becoming enemies; power is exercised with restraint; different perspectives are tolerated; rules are stable and fairly applied. Narcissistic families abandon these norms: difference becomes betrayal, every power is exploited, perspectives other than the dominant one are attacked, rules change to serve the powerful. The resulting chaos isn't random—it's the predictable outcome of norm collapse.

Understanding that these patterns operate at multiple scales can be therapeutic. The narcissistic family often enforced secrecy: what happens in this family stays in this family. The child who experienced coercive control, reality distortion, and the destruction of independent judgment often had no words for what was happening and no validation that it was real. Levitsky and Ziblatt provide both: a vocabulary for describing systematic domination and validation that these patterns have been documented, analysed, and resisted at the highest levels of political science.

This understanding also implies hope. Democracies have recovered from authoritarian erosion; families have broken cycles of abuse. The mechanisms of domination, once understood, lose some of their power. The isolation can be broken; the reality distortion can be named; the manufactured enemies can be seen for what they are. Recovery—personal and political—involves rebuilding what authoritarian systems destroy: the capacity to perceive reality, to tolerate difference, to exercise power with restraint, and to treat opponents as adversaries rather than enemies.

Levitsky and Ziblatt end How Democracies Die with a call for citizens to defend democratic norms—to prioritise the health of democratic institutions over short-term political gains, to build coalitions across partisan divides, to restore the mutual toleration and forbearance that make democracy possible. For survivors of narcissistic abuse, a parallel call applies: to build relationships where difference is tolerated, where power is exercised with restraint, where reality is shared rather than controlled. Both tasks require the same fundamental commitment: valuing the system's health over individual domination, accepting the constraints that make healthy relationship possible.

How Democracies Die

APA Citation