Tyranny of the Minority: Why American Democracy Reached the Breaking Point

“The more imminent threat facing us today, then, is minority rule. By steering the republic so sharply away from the Scylla of majority tyranny, America’s founders left it vulnerable to the Charybdis of minority rule.”

An important argument made by Levitsky and Ziblatt is that there is a persistent myth regarding the superiority of American institutions. Even today, many Americans still venerate the US Founding Fathers and the US Constitution. They believe both enable stability and prosperity within the country. By contrast, the authors argue that the checks the Founding Fathers put in place to prevent majority tyranny have led to a dangerous and unintended consequence: the over-empowerment of minority rule. To them, minority rule represents the greatest threat to the country, and it is enabled through The Antiquated Elements of American Democracy. They use the symbol of Scylla and Charybdis to illustrate this point (See: Symbols & Motifs).

“As the political scientist Adam Przeworski memorably put it, ‘Democracy is a system in which parties lose elections.’ Losing hurts, but in a democracy it is inevitable.”

This passage highlights one key democratic norm: Political parties accept the peaceful transfer of power. In fact, the authors firmly believe that democracy only emerges once political parties accept election losses. This means that political parties will willingly alternate between losing and winning elections.

“What the writer Barbara Ehrenreich called the ‘fear of falling’ can be a powerful force. When a political party represents a group that perceives itself to be losing ground, it often radicalizes. With their constituents’ way of life seemingly at stake, party leaders feel pressure to win at any cost. Losing is no longer acceptable.”

Here, the authors explore how existential fear negatively impacts democratic institutions. There are two important types of fear that disrupt democracy. The first is when political parties become fearful that they will never win elections. The second is when political parties and their constituents fear the loss of their status. In both cases, politicians and lay people alike will turn away from democracy. Fear is thus a powerful driver of the rise of authoritarianism.

“Another high-profile protestor, Petch Osathanugrah, a well-known cultural figure and CEO of a Thai energy drink company, told a reporter, ‘I’m not really for democracy…I don’t think we’re ready for it. We need a strong government like China’s or Singapore’s—almost like a dictatorship, but for the good of the country.’”

Levitsky and Ziblatt use Thailand as a contemporary example to show what happens when existential fear takes root. Petch Osathanugrah is a member of the elite in his country. Like many of his compatriots, he originally believed in democracy. However, he has turned away from democracy because he perceives his political power and social status to be in jeopardy. This existential fear did not suddenly appear. Instead, it built up over time, underscoring how the weakening of democracy typically happens slowly and without people really noticing until it is too late.

“From a distance, semi-loyal democrats may look like loyal democrats. They are mainstream politicians, often in suits and ties, who ostensibly play by the rules and indeed even thrive under them. They never engage in visibly antidemocratic acts. So when democracies die, their fingerprints are rarely found on the murder weapon.”

In Chapter 2, the authors focus on why and how semi-loyal democrats are so dangerous to democratic norms and institutions. First, they emphasize that semi-loyalists are part of mainstream political parties. Rather than rejecting anti-democratic behavior, like their loyalist counterparts, they act in a more ambiguous manner. They will pretend to support democracy yet ignore antidemocratic or violent behaviors, especially within their own ranks. This ambiguity makes semi-loyalists dangerous because their support of authoritarianism is often not openly visible, like it is with authoritarian figures themselves. For this reason, semi-loyalists often maintain public support all while tolerating, protecting, and condoning authoritarian extremists. Seemingly respectable semi-loyalists become authoritarian enablers, playing a key, albeit hidden, role in the death of democracy.

“Democratic backsliding occurs gradually, through a series of reasonable-looking measures: new laws that are ostensibly designed to clean up elections, combat corruption, or create a more efficient judiciary; court rulings that reinterpret existing laws; long-dormant laws that are conveniently rediscovered. Because the measures are couched in legality, it may appear as if little has changed.”

Levitsky and Ziblatt dismantle a common myth about authoritarianism. Many people believe the rise of authoritarianism happens quickly through coups, angry mobs, and revolutions. The authors argue that the dismantling of democracy occurs slowly and often through seemingly legal means. Semi-loyalists weaponize laws that enable them to gradually keep opponents out of politics and consolidate their own political power. While there are warning signs, many lay people do not recognize these warnings until it is too late, and their country has shifted from a democracy to autocracy. Part of the goal of this book is to help readers learn these warning signs so that they stop the authoritarian malaise.

“A 2010 law prohibited reporting that was ‘imbalanced,’ ‘insulting,’ or against ‘public morality.’ Violators of the new law would face fines of up to $900,000. A Media Council, packed with Fidesz loyalists, was created to enforce the law. Although comparable laws exist in other countries, democratic governments almost never enforce them.”

Using the contemporary example of the Fidesz political party in Hungary, the authors demonstrate how political leaders can weaponize laws to gradually remove their opponents from office and consolidate their own authoritarian power. Levitsky and Ziblatt outline how Fidesz loyalists dismantled a key democratic norm: media freedom. Fidesz loyalists used a law in an excessive and undue manner. While many countries have similar laws that suggest imbalanced reporting could be illegal, loyal democrats use them with forbearance (i.e., in very rare situations). Loyal democrats understand that media freedom is key to a healthy democracy. In contrast, Fidesz loyalists used the law to target media platforms that disagreed with their policies. By hiding behind laws, the Fidesz loyalists maintained that their behavior was legal. This hardball measure destroyed media freedom in Hungary. Within just a few years, the Fidesz party or its allies controlled 90 percent of Hungarian media.

“The number of registered Black voters in the state plummeted from 126,000 in 1896 to 6,100 in 1902, and Black turnout fell from 87 percent in the 1896 gubernatorial election to near zero in 1904. In Wilmington, after three Black aldermen were forcibly removed from office in 1898, no African American would serve on the city council again until 1972.”

The focus on Chapter 3 is to show how constitutional hardball tactics derailed the emergence of a multiracial democracy during the Reconstruction era. Levitsky and Ziblatt use Wilmington, North Carolina as a case study. Wilmington was majority Black. Black Americans in the city formed a coalition with disenfranchised poor rural white voters. Together, the two groups opened the door for a more inclusive society where both Black and white voters enjoyed civil and political liberties. This change, however, sparked fear in elite white landowners, many who also owned slaves pre-Civil War. This group, led by the Democratic Party, used violence, including weaponizing the law, to grab back power. In doing so, they obliterated advances in Black suffrage and racial equality.

“More than thirteen hundred Black Americans held public office during the Reconstruction era. Sixteen Black Americans were elected to the US House and Senate during Reconstruction, and more than six hundred were elected to state legislatures. James Pike, a northern journalist visiting the South Carolina state legislature in the late 1860s, critically observed, ‘The body is almost literally a black parliament…The speaker is black, the Clerk is black, the door-keepers are black, the little pages are black, the chairman of the Ways and Means is black, and the chaplain is coal black.’ It was, Pike concluded, ‘a society suddenly turned bottom-side up.’”

The authors use this passage to highlight two central tenets of Chapter 3. First, the US almost became a multiracial democracy during the Reconstruction era. Black suffrage, protected by the federal government, helped propel Black Americans to positions of political power, slowly chipping away at the structural inequalities found within the country. Second, white Americans met these changes with violent opposition. Pike is clearly uncomfortable with the fact that South Carolina’s state legislature is dominated by Black Americans. This discomfort turned to fear for many white Americans as they realized that they were losing political and social power. Fear led to the worst authoritarian backlash seen to date in the country.

“In the words of W.E.B. Du Bois, ‘Democracy died save in the hearts of black folk.’”

As Levitsky and Ziblatt demonstrate, Black activists and writers in the Pre-Civil War era laid the framework for a multiracial democracy. Black Americans continued to fight for democracy during the Reconstruction era. They formed coalitions with disenfranchised rural, poor white voters in the hopes of protecting democracy from the burgeoning authoritarian attacks conducted by the Democratic party and their constituents (elite white landowners). Black Americans also tried to continue voting, even in the face of violence and murder. Unfortunately, the Democratic Party weaponized the law to extinguish any semblance of democracy in the South. White Democrats maintained political and social power for nearly 100 years in most southern states. Despite these setbacks, many Black Americans still believed in and fought for a more democratic country. DuBois believed that Black Americans would eventually save American democracy.

“The V-Dem (Varieties of Democracy) Institute, which tracks global democracy, assigns the world’s major political parties an annual ‘illiberalism’ score, which measures their deviation from democratic norms such as pluralism and civil rights, tolerance of the opposition, and the rejection of political violence. Most western European conservative parties receive a very low score, suggesting a strong commitment to democracy. So did the U.S. Republican Party—through the later 1990s. But the GOP’s illiberalism score soared in the twenty-first century. In 2020, V-Dem concluded that in terms of its commitment to democracy the Republican Party was now ‘more similar to autocratic ruling parties such as the Turkish AKP and Fidesz in Hungary than to typical center-right governing parties.”

The authors argue for The Changing Nature of the Republican Party throughout the book. Many Republican political leaders refuse to admit that their party has turned away from democracy. Using data from a non-partisan organization, the authors argue for the concrete rise of illiberalism within the party. Once again, the authors use data to help support points that readers might find contentious. These data also place the troubles facing the American political system in a global context. While anti-democratic forces are on the rise around the world, the US Republican Party is one of the few political parties in western countries embracing authoritarianism.

“Indeed, the GOP won the largest share of the white vote in every presidential election after 1964.”

This statement underscores that the Republican Party is now the de facto white American political party. Levitsky and Ziblatt document that this change occurred when the Republican Party began to lose elections during the Great Depression. Rather than broadening their coalition, the Republican Party courted white Southerners who resented the increasingly liberal policies of the Democratic Party. Even with the country’s recent demographic changes, the Republican Party has refused to embrace inclusivity and diversity. Instead, Republican political leaders, including Donald Trump, have convinced many Republican voters that they are losing their standing within society. This fear, alongside Republican political leaders violating the three basic principles of democratic behavior, have allowed authoritarianism to grow within the party.

“The Republican Accountability Project evaluated the public statements of all 261 Republican members of Congress, asking whether they expressed doubt about the legitimacy of the [2020] election. A striking 224 of 261 (or 86 percent) of them had. And on January 6, nearly two-thirds of House Republicans voted against certification of the results.”

A key theme raised in Chapter 4 is that of The Changing Nature of the Republican Party. The data from the Republican Accountability Project illustrates this assertion. Republican leaders clearly assisted Trump’s efforts to invalidate the 2020 election results. By doing so, they violated the first basic principle that loyal democrats must uphold: accepting the results of free and fair elections, regardless of whether the party wins or loses.

“Modern democracy is not simply a system of majority rule; it combines majority rule and minority rights.”

Majority rule (collective self-rule) and minority rights (civil liberties) represent the two pillars of liberal democracy. However, protecting these pillars serves as a double-edged sword. Democracy needs rules that keep the power of majorities in check, thereby preventing majorities from violating minority rights. However, majorities must also be empowered when they fairly win elections to govern. Counter-majoritarian institutions can help protect minority rights, but using them excessively weakens democracy, as is the case in the US.

“The political theorist Melissa Schwartzberg adds an important observation: while supermajority rules may protect minority rights in theory, in practice they often end up advancing the interests of other, more privileged minorities. In the United States, counter-majoritarian institutions far more often protected southern slaveholders, large farming interests, and other wealthy elites than they protected vulnerable minorities such as African Americans during Jim Crow or Japanese Americans in the 1940s.”

In this passage, the authors begin to explore one counter-majoritarian institution they find troubling: the Senate filibuster. The filibuster is a supermajority rule that enables a partisan minority to block legislation supported by the majority. The original purpose of the filibuster was to help safeguard minority rights or help build consensus in the Senate through a veto. The filibuster was rarely used until the 21st century. Partisan minorities in the Senate now use the filibuster to block votes on important legislation or changes to the US Constitution, despite these changes being popular among a majority of Americans. The filibuster now weakens American democracy.

“As one political observer noted almost three-quarters of a century ago, ‘The American majority [is] an amiable shepherd dog kept forever on a lion’s leash.’”

Most Americans today still believe in democracy. However, the authors posit that several institutions, such as the US Bill of Rights, life-time term appointments for Supreme Court justices, and the Electoral College, are part of The Antiquated Elements of American Democracy. These elements keep Americans locked in policies and ideas that were popular with previous generations rather than with the present-day. As such, these antiquated elements are weakening American democracy and moving the country towards authoritarianism.

“Between 1992 and 2020, the Republican Party has lost the popular vote in every presidential election except 2004. In other words, the GOP won the most votes only once during the span of nearly three decades. And yet Republican Party candidates have won the presidency three times during that period, allowing the party to occupy the presidency for twelve of those twenty-eight years.”

The authors use these datapoints to underscore a key assertion: US presidential elections have not been very democratic in recent decades. Levitsky and Ziblatt attribute this democratic weakening to the Electoral College. The Electoral College’s winner-take-all system combined with its clear bias towards the Republican Party distorts the popular vote. The authors argue that political candidates should not hold power in democracies if they did not win elections.

“The political scientists Jacob Grumbach and Christopher Warshaw analyzed polling data to determine support for abortion rights in the states. They found that majorities of the public support legal abortion rights in about forty states, while only about ten states have clear antiabortion majorities. This means that as many as sixteen states could pass restrictive abortion laws that are opposed by a majority of the state’s population.”

Levitsky and Ziblatt use the politics of abortion to highlight how minority rule can be detrimental to everyday American citizens. In 2022, the US Supreme Court eliminated the constitutionally-protected rights to an abortion, tossing the issue to state legislatures and Congress. This ruling went against popular opinion in the country. Most Americans did not approve of the overturning of Roe v. Wade. The above passage shows the real impact this will have on Americans. Despite many wanting legal abortion rights, they live in states with conservative legislatures that are passing laws in opposition to the majority viewpoint. Democracies are under threat when policies go against the will of the people.

“In politics, power begets power. Between 2016 and 2020, a president who lost the popular vote used his party’s manufactured Senate majority to shift the Supreme Court substantially to the right. With the court on board, minority rule can be even further entrenched.”

The authors underscore that the excessive counter-majoritarian institutions in the US not only reinforce authoritarian extremism, but also empower partisan minority over majority rule. The institutions that are most at risk of minority rule are intertwined. The Electoral College enabled a president who lost the popular vote to be president. This president, in turn, was allowed to pick three Supreme Court justices, even though one of those vacancies should have been elected by President Obama. The Supreme Court then overturned constitutional protection for abortion rights, despite the American public largely being against this decision. The excessive counter-majoritarian institutions have made the US vulnerable to undemocratic situations, allowing minority rule to prevail over majority rule.

“In total, Norway’s constitution was amended 316 times between 1814 and 2014.”

Levitsky and Ziblatt use Norway’s constitutional amendments to demonstrate The Importance of Reform. Norway, like many democratic countries in the West, started off with undemocratic elements in its political institutions. Similar to the US, Norway had a clause that gave more political power to sparsely- populated areas in the country. Unlike the US, however, Norway has since removed this clause. Norway shored up its democracy over the span of two centuries, turning it into one of the most democratic countries in the world. The authors hope American readers take inspiration from the Norway example: It is possible to reform counter-majoritarian institutions and strengthen democracy.

“The United States, once a democratic pioneer and model for other nations, has now become a democratic laggard.”

The authors argue that, in contrast to other democratic countries, many pre-democratic American institutions, such as the Electoral college, remain in place. These counter-majoritarian institutions are part of The Antiquated Elements of American Democracy, putting the country at risk of minority rule. The authors hope that such statements and accompanying evidence will raise alarm bells for American readers.

“Bayh didn’t give up. He reintroduced his Electoral College reform bill in 1971, 1973, 1975, and 1977. In 1977, following yet another ‘close call’ election, the proposal got some traction. President Jimmy Carter backed the initiative, and a Gallup poll found that 75 percent of Americans supported it. But the bill was delayed and then, once again, filibustered in the Senate. When a cloture vote was finally held in 1979, it garnered only fifty-one votes.’”

American political leaders have tried to reform the most excessive of the counter-majoritarian institutions, including the Electoral College. As the above passage shows, however, attempts over the last few decades have been unsuccessful. The most unsettling aspects of these reforms is that they have failed in the face of presidential candidates winning even when they lost the popular vote. The authors believe that ignoring The Importance of Reform will continue to weaken American democracy even further.

“We stand at a crossroads: either America will be a multiracial democracy or it will not be a democracy at all.”

The authors strongly believe that the US is at a crossroads. While the majority of Americans support the formation of a multiracial democracy, the country’s counter-majoritarian institutions weaken democratic norms. Levitsky and Ziblatt recognize that the 15 reforms they outline will likely not be adopted soon. Rather, American democracy only stands a chance at survival if people join civic movements. This conclusion is one area of the book that has received criticism: Some critics wish the authors had proposed bolder or even more realistic reforms rather than relying on what has been successful in other countries.