# Steven Levitsky American political scientist (b. 1968), David Rockefeller Professor of Latin American Studies at Harvard. Co-author with Daniel Ziblatt of *How Democracies Die* (2018), the high-visibility post-2016 treatment of contemporary democratic-backsliding patterns; co-author with Lucan Way of *Competitive Authoritarian Regimes* (2010), the academic-political-science treatment of the same regime family. Levitsky's central methodological contribution is the *competitive authoritarianism* framework — the specification of regimes that hold elections but tilt the playing field via media capture, judiciary capture, and selective enforcement. The framework supplies analytical vocabulary for the post-2000 wave of regimes (Putin's Russia, Orbán's Hungary, Erdoğan's Turkey, Chávez/Maduro's Venezuela) that did not fit either democracy or classical authoritarianism cleanly. The 2018 *How Democracies Die* — co-authored with Ziblatt for a general audience — applied the framework to the U.S. and was widely read in mainstream-political circles; its argument that institutional norms (forbearance, mutual toleration) are essential to democratic survival became standard vocabulary in subsequent democratic-backsliding journalism. ## Biography and Academic Career **Steven Levitsky** was born in **1968** and earned his **Ph.D. in political science** from the **University of California, Berkeley**. He joined the **Harvard University** Department of Government, where he holds the **David Rockefeller Professorship of Latin American Studies**. Levitsky's early academic work focused on **Latin American comparative politics** — particularly Argentine Peronism. His ***Transforming Labor-Based Parties in Latin America: Argentine Peronism in Comparative Perspective*** (2003) analyzed how populist parties adapt organizationally. ## Competitive Authoritarianism (2010) Levitsky co-authored ***Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes After the Cold War*** (2010) with **Lucan Way** (University of Toronto) — the foundational academic treatment of the regime type that holds elections but systematically tilts the playing field through media capture, judicial capture, selective enforcement, and harassment of opposition. The framework specified a regime category that fit neither classical democracy nor classical authoritarianism — applicable to Putin's Russia, Orbán's Hungary, Erdoğan's Turkey, and Chávez/Maduro's Venezuela. The competitive-authoritarianism framework became standard vocabulary in comparative-politics scholarship and in subsequent journalistic coverage of democratic backsliding. ## *How Democracies Die* (2018) Levitsky co-authored ***How Democracies Die*** (2018) with Harvard colleague **[[Daniel Ziblatt]]** — a general-audience application of the competitive-authoritarianism framework to the United States. The book argued that democratic survival depends on **institutional norms** — particularly **mutual toleration** (accepting opponents as legitimate) and **institutional forbearance** (not exercising legal powers to their maximum extent) — rather than on formal constitutional rules alone. The book was a *New York Times* bestseller and became the most widely-read academic treatment of democratic-backsliding patterns in the post-2016 period. ## *Tyranny of the Minority* (2023) Levitsky and Ziblatt published a follow-up, ***Tyranny of the Minority: Why American Democracy Reached the Breaking Point*** (2023), arguing that U.S. counter-majoritarian institutions (the [[Electoral College]], the Senate, the filibuster, the Supreme Court's lifetime appointments) have been captured by a radicalized minority party and now function to entrench minority rule rather than to protect minority rights as originally intended. ## KB Significance Levitsky is the **academic-political-science reference node** for the democratic-backsliding analytical framework used throughout this KB. His competitive-authoritarianism framework supplies the vocabulary for analyzing how democratic institutions can be hollowed out while maintaining electoral forms, and *How Democracies Die* is the most widely-cited academic source in mainstream-press coverage of the dynamics this KB tracks. The Levitsky/Ziblatt framework is referenced in [[How Democracies Die]] and connects to the broader authoritarianism literature via [[Juan Linz]] (regime-type-theory predecessor). ## See Also - [[Power Theory]] — the analytical framework - [[Daniel Ziblatt]] — *How Democracies Die* co-author - [[How Democracies Die]] — the institutional-erosion framework - [[Timothy Snyder]] — the historian's complementary approach to democratic-backsliding diagnostics - [[Jason Stanley]] — the philosopher's complementary approach; fascist tactics within democracies - [[Hannah Arendt]] · [[The Origins of Totalitarianism]] — totalitarianism diagnostics - [[Sheldon Wolin]] — inverted totalitarianism as the steady-state complement - [[Juan Linz]] — regime-type-theory predecessor - [[Authoritarianism]]