Steven Levitsky

Author of How Democracies Die and Tyranny of the Minority

Update: Levitsky has joined other democracy experts to file an amicus brief supporting the Anderson challengers in the Trump v. Anderson case.

Steven Levitsky is David Rockefeller Professor of Latin American Studies and Professor of Government at Harvard University, director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard, and a Charles F. Kettering Foundation senior fellow. His research focuses on democracy and authoritarianism, political parties, weak and informal institutions, and most recently, the crisis of democracy in the United States. He and Daniel Ziblatt are authors of How Democracies Die (2019), which was a New York Times bestseller and was published in 29 languages, and Tyranny of the Minority: Why American Democracy Reached the Breaking Point (2023). Levitsky has written or edited 11 other books, including Transforming Labor-Based Parties in Latin America: Argentine Peronism in Comparative Perspective (2003), Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes after the Cold War (with Lucan Way, 2010), and Revolution and Dictatorship: The Violent Origins of Durable Authoritarianism (with Lucan Way, 2022). He has also written for The Atlantic, Brazil’s Folha de São Paulo, Foreign Affairs, Peru’s La República, the New Republic, the New York Times, and the Washington Post. Levitsky is currently writing a book with Lucan Way on the sources of global democratic resilience in the 21st century.

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Steven Levitsky is David Rockefeller Professor of Latin American Studies and Professor of Government at Harvard University. He is also director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard. His research focuses on democracy and authoritarianism, political parties, weak and informal institutions, and most recently, the crisis of democracy in the United States. He and Daniel Ziblatt are authors of How Democracies Die (2019), which was a New York Times bestseller and was published in 29 languages, and Tyranny of the Minority: Why American Democracy Reached the Breaking Point (2023). Levitsky has written or edited 11 other books, including Transforming Labor-Based Parties in Latin America: Argentine Peronism in Comparative Perspective (2003), Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes after the Cold War (with Lucan Way, 2010), and Revolution and Dictatorship: The Violent Origins of Durable Authoritarianism (with Lucan Way, 2022). He has also written for The Atlantic, Brazil’s Folha de São Paulo, Foreign Affairs, Peru’s La República, the New Republic, the New York Times, and the Washington Post. Levitsky is currently writing a book with Lucan Way on the sources of global democratic resilience in the 21st century.