Steven Levitsky Archives - Public Seminar

Democracy

Donald Trump: Democracy’s Mirror image?

Modern liberal democracies can always cancel themselves

September 15, 2020 • by Philip Manow

______ In a modern representative democracy, power alternates via elections. Or, as one minimalist definition puts it: ‘democracy is simply a system in which incumbents lose elections and leave when they lose’.[1] But since they only leave after the event, democracy on this account of it can only ever prove itself ex-post. ...

The Orbán regime is clearly not democratic

There is no democracy in Hungary anymore. If you have a hegemonic party that has gained a constitution-making majority in the parliament three times in a row, in increasingly rigged elections, one does not have a democracy. If the power of all major independent institutions is curtailed, or they are led ...