The Gray Area with Sean Illing29 Jan 2018

How Democracies Die

The year is young, but Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt’s How Democracies Die is going to be one of its most important books. It will be read as a commentary on Donald Trump, which is fair enough, because the book is, in part, a commentary on Donald Trump. But it deserves more than that. It is more than that. How Democracies Die is three books woven together. One summarizes acres of research on how democracies tumble into autocracy. The second is an analysis of the troubling conditions under which American democracy thrived and the reasons it has entered into decline. The third book is a fretful tour of Trump’s first year in office, and the ways in which his instincts and actions mirror those of would-be autocrats before him. Of these, the book about Donald Trump is the least interesting, and so in this interview, I didn’t focus on it. Instead, this is a discussion about how modern democracies fall, and the ways in which American democracy has been creeping towards crisis for decades now. Viewed this way, Trump is much more a symptom of our democratic decline than its cause. So let's talk about the cause. Books and Articles Mentioned The Oppermanns by Lion Feuchtwanger The Shaping of Southern Politics: Suffrage Restriction and the Establishment of the One-Party South, 1880-1910 by J. Morgan. Kousser The Path to Power (The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Volume 1) by Robert Caro Political Order in Changing Societies by Samuel P. Huntington (edited) Donald Matthews' book about the Senate in the 1950s Julia Azari's piece, Weak parties and strong partisanship are a bad combination: Rosenthal political polarization The webcomic Ezra mentioned, "Different" James Carse's book, Finite and Infinite Games Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(766)

The world according to Ralph Nader

Ralph Nader needs no introduction. But if your knowledge of Nader mostly consists of his 2000 campaign for the presidency, his career does demand some context. Nader is one of America’s truly great po...

4 Feb 20191h 24min

This conversation will change how you understand misogyny

Misogyny has long been understood as something men feel, not something women experience. That, says philosopher Kate Manne, is a mistake. In her book Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny, Manne defines mi...

31 Jan 20192h 14min

Ending the age of animal cruelty, with Bruce Friedrich

You often hear that eating animals is natural. And it is. But not the way we do it. The industrial animal agriculture system is a technological marvel. It relies on engineering broiler chickens that g...

28 Jan 20191h 19min

Robert Sapolsky on the toxic intersection of poverty and stress

Robert Sapolsky is a Stanford neuroscientist and primatologist. He’s the author of a slew of important books on human biology and behavior. But it’s an older book he wrote that forms the basis for thi...

24 Jan 20191h 19min

Frances Lee on why bipartisanship is irrational

There aren’t too many people with an idea that will actually change how you think about American politics. But Frances Lee is one of them. In her new book, Insecure Majorities, Lee makes a point that ...

21 Jan 20191h 1min

Sean Decatur doesn’t see a free speech crisis on campus

Sean Decatur is the president of Kenyon College and the first African-American to hold that job. He’s also one of the most thoughtful voices in the debate over free speech and political correctness on...

17 Jan 20191h 17min

Cal Newport has an answer for digital burnout

Cal Newport suspects you’re a digital maximalist — someone who believes that any potential for benefit is reason enough to start using a new technology. Don’t feel bad. That’s how most of us are. That...

14 Jan 20191h 8min

Eric Holder’s plan to save democracy

Eric Holder was attorney general during the first six years of Barack Obama’s presidency, and there are days when it feels like he’s the attorney general of Obama’s post-presidency, too. Holder chairs...

10 Jan 20191h 4min