Tyranny of the Minority with Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt

The Preamble

Sharon McMahon

Government, History, Storytelling, Education

4.9 • 15.1K Ratings

🗓️ 8 September 2023

⏱️ 54 minutes

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Summary

American Democracy has faced some challenging times, living through a modern day political crisis. Today, Sharon is joined by Harvard professors of government, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt to dig into all things Democracy. In their new book, Tyranny of the Minority, they explore how democracies break down throughout history and find the striking pattern that political minorities often govern over political majorities. Factor in the unsettling truth that the Constitution – even with its brilliance and reverence – has flaws, which limit the power of majorities, and we’re left wondering: Why have we stopped working to reform and improve the Constitution over the last half century? What are other Democracies doing to fight Authoritarianism? And what is a “Constitutional Republic” in relation to a Democracy?

Special thanks to our guests, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, for joining us today.

Host/Executive Producer: Sharon McMahon

Guests: Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt

Audio Producer: Jenny Snyder

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello friends, welcome. Thank you so much for being here today. Today I am joined by the
0:09.6	authors of tyranny of the minority. Maybe you're familiar with Stephen Lewitsky and Daniel
0:15.5	Zoblot, who have written a very popular book called How Democracies Die. And this episode
0:22.2	is all about American democracy in jeopardy. And what we can do, what does it look like
0:29.0	when authoritarian try to seize power? And what actions can the rest of us take to ensure
0:36.9	that they don't? Let's dive in. I'm Sharon McMahon, and here's where it gets interesting.
0:46.7	I am very excited to be joined today by Daniel Zoblot and Stephen Lewitsky. I read your
0:53.5	first book How Democracies Die and was very excited to read tyranny of the minority. Thank
0:59.7	you both so much for making time to be here today. Happy to be here, great to be with you.
1:03.7	You know, the United States democracy has been facing some challenging times recently. Perhaps
1:10.2	you're familiar. Perhaps this is a topic with which you have some familiarity. Daniel, do you
1:16.3	feel overall optimistic about U.S. democracy at this moment in time? Well, it's certainly true
1:24.6	that we're living through a political crisis. We're experiencing this directly and this is something
1:30.8	that resonates with what we've researched in other parts of the world. So we wrote How Democracies
1:34.8	Die because we've studied how democracies break down throughout history. We saw a similar kind of
1:39.3	risk in the United States. But in this book, what we're really trying to do is do a kind of deeper
1:43.7	dive and diagnosis of what's going wrong. And just, you know, one thing that really is quite
1:48.7	striking is that we live in a democracy in which it's possible for somebody to get elected
1:54.3	president without winning the vote. And so this exposes a broader problem in our politics that
1:59.7	political minorities often govern over political majorities. And I think in many ways, this has led
2:03.8	to the crisis and we elaborate this in the book that we're experiencing today. Yeah, you mentioned
2:09.2	in the book. You say that that leads us to another unsettling truth. Part of the problem we face
	...

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