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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 01f1c4a | As we noted earlier, the chief executive's constitutional power to pardon is without limit, | Steven Levitsky | ||
| 10de3f3 | but presidents have historically exercised it with great restraint, seeking advice from the Justice Department and never issuing pardons for self-protection or political gain. | Steven Levitsky | ||
| 8705737 | The Trump administration also mounted efforts to sideline key players in the political system. President Trump's rhetorical attacks on critics in the media are an example. His repeated accusations that outlets such as the New York Times and CNN were dispensing "fake news" and conspiring against him look familiar to any student of authoritarianism." | Steven Levitsky | ||
| 37a0f30 | Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa used this approach. His multimillion-dollar defamation suits and jailing of journalists on charges of defamation had a powerfully chilling effect on the media. | Steven Levitsky | ||
| 3188ec0 | The plan was reminiscent of the Chavez government's repeated moves to strip opposition-run city governments of their control over local hospitals, police forces, ports, and other infrastructure. Unlike the Venezuelan president, however, President Trump was blocked by the courts. | Steven Levitsky | ||
| 1486b09 | This is precisely what happened, as we have already noted, in Paraguay in 2012 with the two-day "quickie" impeachment of Fernando Lugo, and in Ecuador in 1997 with the removal of Abdala Bucaram on bogus grounds of "mental incapacity." In these cases, impeachment was weaponized--the leaders of congress used it to remove a president they didn't like." | Steven Levitsky | ||
| a5401d9 | Your tone of voice can be conveyed in both the words you speak and in the words you write. | communication-skills customer-service-quotes employee-engagement motivational-leadership-speaker motivational-speaker-susan-young positive-first-impression-quotes quotes-by-susan-c-young relationship-quotes susanspeaks-com | Susan C. Young | |
| 9a3088d | In many ways, President Trump followed the electoral authoritarian script during his first year. He made efforts to capture the referees, sideline the key players who might halt him, and tilt the playing field. But the president has talked more than he has acted, and his most notorious threats have not been realized. Troubling antidemocratic initiatives, including packing the FBI with loyalists and blocking the Mueller investigation, were d.. | Steven Levitsky | ||
| 2f7ba07 | Scorched-earth tactics often erode support for the opposition by scaring off moderates. And they unify progovernment forces, as even dissidents within the incumbent party close ranks in the face of an uncompromising opposition. | Steven Levitsky | ||
| feb8460 | The post-1965 realignment also began a process of sorting out voters ideologically. For the first time in nearly a century, partisanship and ideology converged, with the GOP becoming primarily conservative and the Democrats becoming predominantly liberal. | Steven Levitsky | ||
| 2d7dbc8 | And when the opposition fights dirty, it provides the government with justification for cracking down. | Steven Levitsky | ||
| 7ee5a15 | Weakened and discredited, the opposition could not stop the regime's subsequent descent into authoritarianism. | Steven Levitsky | ||
| df4f364 | Opposition strategies in Colombia under President Alvaro Uribe were more successful. | Steven Levitsky | ||
| 2765c26 | Beginning with Ronald Reagan in 1980, the GOP embraced the Christian Right and adopted increasingly pro-evangelical positions, including opposition to abortion, support for school prayer, and, later, opposition to gay marriage. | Steven Levitsky | ||
| cc6b0b9 | Protest should be viewed in a similar way. Public protest is a basic right and an important activity in any democracy, but its aim should be the defense of rights and institutions, rather than their disruption. In an important study of the effects of black protest in the l960s, political scientist Omar Wasow found that black-led nonviolent protest fortified the national civil rights agenda in Washington and broadened public support for that.. | Steven Levitsky | ||
| b71bf8d | White evangelicals--who had leaned Democratic in the 1960s--began to vote Republican. In 2016, 76 percent of white evangelicals identified as Republican. Democratic voters, in turn, grew increasingly secular. The percentage of white Democrats who attended church regularly fell from nearly 50 percent in the 1960s to below 30 percent in the 2000s. | Steven Levitsky | ||
| 8cd298c | When major businesses join progressive boycotts, they often succeed. | Steven Levitsky | ||
| ea28d45 | In addition, whereas a narrow (urban, secular, progressive) anti-Trump coalition would reinforce the current axes of partisan division, a broader coalition would crosscut these axes and maybe even help dampen them. A political movement that brings together--even if temporarily--Bernie Sanders supporters and businesspeople, evangelicals and secular feminists, and small-town Republicans and urban Black Lives Matter supporters, will open chann.. | Steven Levitsky | ||
| 930cdb4 | The reforms of the 1960s gave Americans a third chance to build a truly multiethnic democracy. It is imperative that we succeed, extraordinarily difficult though the task is. | Steven Levitsky | ||
| 30901d6 | Resentment fuels polarization. | Steven Levitsky | ||
| f8fc0bb | Some political scientists worried about the new system. Binding primaries were certainly more democratic. But might they be too democratic? By placing presidential nominations in the hands of voters, binding primaries weakened parties' gatekeeping function, potentially eliminating the peer review process and opening the door to outsiders. Just before the McGovern-Fraser Commission began its work, two prominent political scientists warned th.. | Steven Levitsky | ||
| 7138cd6 | Over the last quarter century, Democrats and Republicans have become much more than just two competing parties, sorted into liberal and conservative camps. Their voters are now deeply divided by race, religious belief, geography, and even "way of life." | Steven Levitsky | ||
| a69840d | The 1990-2015 period was easily the most democratic quarter century in world history--partly because Western powers broadly supported democracy. That may now be changing. Under Donald Trump, the United States appears to be abandoning its role as democracy promoter for the first time since the Cold War. President Trump's is the least prodemocratic of any U.S. administration since Nixon's. Moreover, America is no longer a democratic model. | Steven Levitsky | ||
| b452fb7 | It is difficult to find examples of societies in which shrinking ethnic majorities gave up their dominant status without a fight. | Steven Levitsky | ||
| 7355790 | In Israel, the demographic threat created by the de facto annexation of the West Bank is pushing the country toward a political system that two of its former prime ministers have compared to apartheid. | Steven Levitsky | ||
| 646d0b2 | Party gatekeepers failed at three key junctures: the "invisible primary," the primaries themselves, and the general election." -- | Steven Levitsky | ||
| eba8165 | In short, most Republican leaders ended up holding the party line. If they had broken decisively with Trump, telling Americans loudly and clearly that he posed a threat to our country's cherished institutions, and if, on those grounds, they had endorsed Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump might never have ascended to the presidency. | Steven Levitsky | ||
| 8ce1489 | Many government efforts to subvert democracy are "legal," in the sense that they are approved by the legislature or accepted by the courts. They may even be portrayed as efforts to improve democracy--making the judiciary more efficient, combating corruption, or cleaning up the electoral process." | Steven Levitsky | ||
| a795aa2 | False charges of fraud can undermine public confidence in elections--and when citizens do not trust the electoral process, they often lose faith in democracy itself. | Steven Levitsky | ||
| 25b311b | Deberiamos preocuparnos en serio cuando un politico: 1) rechaza, ya sea de palabra o mediante acciones, las reglas democraticas del juego, 2) niega la legitimidad de sus oponentes, 3) tolera o alienta la violencia o 4) indica su voluntad de restringir las libertades civiles de sus opositores, incluidos los medios de comunicacion. | Steven Levitsky | ||
| d88006c | By contrast, a social policy agenda that sets aside stiff means testing in favor of the more universalistic models found in northern Europe could have a moderating effect on our politics. Social policies that benefit everyone--Social Security and Medicare are prime examples--could help diminish resentment, build bridges across large swaths of the American electorate, and lock into place social support for more durable policies to reduce inc.. | Steven Levitsky | ||
| 09380bc | Democracy is grinding work. Whereas family businesses and army squadrons may be ruled by fiat, democracies require negotiation, compromise, and concessions. | Steven Levitsky | ||
| ad07e46 | The simple fact of the matter is that the world has never built a multiethnic democracy in which no particular ethnic group is in the majority and where political equality, social equality and economies that empower all have been achieved. | Steven Levitsky | ||
| 9137fcb | Politicians who talk about purity usually end up deciding who is pure and who is not. | politics | Elizabeth Kostova | |
| 9727901 | When gatekeeping institutions fail, mainstream politicians must do everything possible to keep dangerous figures away from the centers of power. | gate-keeping-of-democracy | Steven Levitsky | |
| 370e08e | Collective abdication--the transfer of authority to a leader who threatens democracy--usually flows from one of two sources. The first is the misguided belief that an authoritarian can be controlled or tamed. The second is what sociologist Ivan Ermakoff calls "ideological collusion," in which the authoritarian's agenda overlaps sufficiently with that of mainstream politicians that abdication is desirable, or at least preferable to the alter.. | authoritarian | Steven Levitsky | |
| a5245a2 | Huq and Ginsburg recently warned that "the constitutional and legal safeguards of [American] democracy...would prove to be fairly easy to manipulate in the face of a truly antidemocratic leader." | Steven Levitsky | ||
| 7408b6f | Democracies do have written rules (constitutions) and referees (the courts). But these work best, and survive longest, in countries where written constitutions are reinforced by their own unwritten rules of the game. These rules or norms serve as the soft guardrails of democracy, preventing day-to-day political competition from devolving into a no-holds-barred conflict. | no-holds-barred rules | Steven Levitsky | |
| dcab6be | If Democrats do not work to restore norms of mutual toleration and forbearance, their next president will likely confront an opposition willing to use any means necessary to defeat them. And if partisan rifts deepen and our unwritten rules continue to fray, Americans could eventually elect a president who is even more dangerous than Trump. | Steven Levitsky | ||
| 890d71c | If partisan animosity prevails over mutual toleration, those in control of congress may prioritize defense of the president over the performance of their constitutional duties. | Steven Levitsky | ||
| f1f7a86 | Democracies work best--and survive longer--where constitutions are reinforced by unwritten democratic norms. Two basic norms have preserved America's checks and balances in ways we have come to take for granted: mutual toleration, or the understanding that competing parties accept one another as legitimate rivals, and forbearance, or the idea that politicians should exercise restraint in deploying their institutional prerogatives. These two.. | Steven Levitsky | ||
| f82570e | Convinced that "something must finally give," a cabal of rivalrous conservatives convened in late January 1933 and settled on a solution: A popular outsider should be placed at the head of the government. They despised him but knew that at least he had a mass following. And, most of all, they thought they could control him." | Steven Levitsky | ||
| c509795 | Norms of forbearance are especially important in presidential democracies. As Juan Linz argued, divided government can easily bring deadlock, dysfunction, and constitutional crisis. Unrestrained presidents can pack the Supreme Court or circumvent Congress by ruling via decree. | Steven Levitsky | ||
| c2fa77c | But rather than denouncing the coup leaders as an extremist threat, the former president offered them public sympathy--and, with it, an opening to mainstream politics. | Steven Levitsky |