How Democracies Die: Analysis Part 2
To further the conversation on how democracies fail, one only need to take a quick look toward how Peru’s Alberto Fujimori took an unplanned rise to power or how Argentina's Jaun Perón abused "institutional prerogatives in an unrestrained way” ( Levitsky and Ziblatt ) to get a scope of how slowly a government breakdown can be. To extenuate the time that it takes to break down democratic order, authors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt once again look closely at previous Latin American authoritarians and the United States constitution to examine how such leaders and historical documents can actually progress the breakdown of a democracy. Through the novel's 4th chapter, "Subverting Democracy", Levitsky and Ziblatt handle authoritarian rises to power as they note how “ democratic breakdown doesn’t need a blueprint” ( referencing the aforementioned Fujimori and more ). By foolishly believing that the breakdown of democracy must be a planned exchange underestimates, to both authors, the true power of certain political candidates and how badly their words, actions and influence can destroy a society from the inside out.
The authors also take into consideration how “buying off political opponents" and “tilting the playing field against", possible authoritarians can assault democracy slowly in a rather unassuming way. But simply silencing candidates and unexpectedly rising to power is not the only shortcut towards democratic failure: a misinterpretation of democratic and constitutional norms can lead a nation there as well. Ziblatt and Levitsky’s qualitative analysis of countries with similar constitutions to the United States that still fall far from democracy proves that “even well-designed constitutions cannot, by themselves guarantee democracy”. Therefore, if having a constitution does not lead a society to develop proper democratic norms or simply bypass them, the nation will surely fail in its attempt to uphold a democratic standard, leading to eventual downfall or worse: Anarchy, a state of disordered lawlessness due to absence of government authority ( Merriam-Webster ) .’
