How Democracies Die

This book is incredibly interesting. As a forewarning the beginning and ends of this book do address the current administration but the majority of this book is looking at other democracies and how they failed or continue to thrive. It was interesting to see that even democracies that literally copied our constitution, government, courts and politics have fallen into authoritarianism and demagoguery. We are not unique in that our democracy is unique but in that our “soft guardrails” remained mostly intact for so long, until recently.

One of the things they found that eventually led to most failed democracies was their guardrails stopped working. Guardrails being:
Mutual toleration: The idea that all political rivals treat each other with civility and worthy of the positions. Not criminals or anti-patriots.
Institutional forbearance: The idea that those in power do not use the full power of their position to inhibit rivals from coming to power or pass legislation. They do not tilt the playing field unfairly in their favor. Basically, playing political hard-ball.

The book talks about reasons that these soft guardrails are failing, most notably the polarization of the parties, the enfranchising of diverse minority groups, declining middle-class and income inequality.