Steven Levitsky

thumb| Steven Robert Levitsky (born January 17, 1968) is an American political scientist and professor of government at Harvard University and a senior fellow for democracy at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is also a senior fellow at the Kettering Foundation, an American non-partisan research foundation. See also: How Democracies Die Quotes This is what happens when not just Trump, but much of the Republican Party leadership, in a polarized political setting, spends four years lying to its base — working its base into a frenzy telling its base that the other side are traitors, that the other side are trying to destroy the country, that the other side stole the election. If you spend four years mobilizing the base into outrage, you’re very likely to get this sort of violent mobilization. Quoted in Leah S. Yared, Meera S. Nair, Oliver L. Riskin-Kutz, and Andy Z. Wang, "'A Real Dark Pandora's Box': Harvard Faculty React to Storming of U.S. Capitol", The Harvard Crimson (January 7, 2021) See: 2021 United States Capitol attack The Supreme Court constitutes a third pillar of minority rule. The court's partisan bias is indirect but nevertheless is consequential. Given the nature of the Electoral College and the Senate, Supreme Court justices may be nominated by presidents who lost the popular vote and confirmed by Senate majorities that represent only a minority of Americans. And given the Republican advantage in the Electoral College and the Senate, such justices are far more likely to be Republican appointees.This has certainly been the case in the twenty-first century. Four of nine current Supreme Court justices- Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett- were confirmed by a Senate majority that collectively won a minority of the popular vote in Senate elections and represented less than half of the American population. And three of them- Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Coney Barrett- were also nominated by a president who lost the popular vote. Had majorities prevailed in presidential and Senate elections, then, three- and possibly four- of the Supreme Court's most conservative justices would not be on the court. In all likelihood, three of these seats would have been filled by Democratic appointees.Thanks to the growing divergence between electoral majorities and the composition of the Supreme Court, Americans have a court that is increasingly- and often glaringly- at odds with public opinion. Historically, scholars of the Supreme Court argue, justices have tempered their decisions to avoid straying too far from the people's will. That appears to be no longer the case. Recent research has found a growing gap between Supreme Court rulings and majority public opinion in the United States. This trend is no accident: the court's conservative majority was imposed by a partisan minority. From Tyranny of the Minority: Why American Democracy Reached the Breaking Point (2023), by Levitsky & Daniel Ziblatt, New York: Crown, hardcover first edition, p. 176-177 As the civil rights generation passes into history, the work of building a truly multiracial democracy falls upon us. Future generations will hold us to account. From Tyranny of the Minority: Why American Democracy Reached the Breaking Point (2023), by Levitsky & Daniel Ziblatt, New York: Crown, hardcover first edition, p. 258 Authoritarianism does not require the destruction of the constitutional order. What lies ahead is not fascist or single-party dictatorship but competitive authoritarianism—a system in which parties compete in elections but the incumbent’s abuse of power tilts the playing field against the opposition. "The Path to American Authoritarianism: What Comes After Democratic Breakdown", Foreign Affairs (February 11, 2025) · Written with Lucan A. Way Since 1974, no government, Democratic or Republican, has engaged in anything remotely like the Trump administration’s politicized attacks on critics and rivals. None of Trump’s three predecessors—George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden—politicized the FBI. ... Likewise, Trump’s predecessors did not seriously politicize the Justice Department. Under Bush, Obama, and Biden, politicians whom the department investigated and prosecuted were widely viewed as having committed serious crimes, and crucially, were both Republicans and Democrats. ... The Bush, Obama, and Biden administrations did not attempt to politicize the military, reorient its mission to target domestic “enemies,” or deploy the National Guard to cities against the will of elected local officials. None of them sued major media outlets, used the FCC to threaten media companies if they did not alter their programming or other content, or attempted illegal extortion against law firms, universities, or other civil society institutions. Finally, Bush, Obama, and Biden never questioned the results of elections, tried to overturn election results, or sought to exert federal control over local and state election processes. In each of these critical areas, the Trump administration stands alone in its authoritarianism. "The Price of American Authoritarianism: What Can Reverse Democratic Decline?", Foreign Affairs (December 11, 2025) · Written with Lucan A. Way and Daniel Ziblatt Quotes about Levitsky Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt are professors of government at Harvard University and the authors of the New York Times bestseller How Democracies Die, which won the Goldsmith Book Prize, was shortlisted for the Lionel Gelber Prize, and was named one of the best books of the year by The Washington Post, Time, and Foreign Affairs. From the back dust jacket flap of Tyranny of the Minority: Why American Democracy Reached the Breaking Point (2023), by Steven Levitsky & Daniel Ziblatt, New York: Crown, hardcover first edition. External links Category:Political scientists from the United States Category:Academics from the United States Category:Social scientists from the United States Category:Jews from the United States Category:Harvard University faculty Category:Stanford University alumni Category:University of California, Berkeley alumni Category:People from New York (state) Category:1968 births Category:Living people