Carlos Alberto Ledezma's Reviews > How Democracies Die: What History Reveals About Our Future

This book was quite disappointing. I was expecting a thorough analysis on how stable democracies turned into authoritarian regimes; in contrast, the book only does a quick overview of some modern dictatorships and then delves into the United States' democratic history. Finally, the book concludes with some possible solutions to the current political crisis in the US, but these solutions don't seem to be founded on what's written in the rest of the book.

On the upside, the essay presents many interesting concepts that allow to assess if an 'outsider politician' shows authoritarian traits. Also, the first chapters of the book make a strong point about the unwritten rules that are tacitly understood and respected because they support democracies. As the book thoroughly states, no constitution can set the basis for the functioning of a whole country. Another strong point of the book is its portrayal of politicians and political parties as the main responsible for safeguarding democracy.

Perhaps the most frustrating bit of this essay is that it covers all authoritarian regimes under the same umbrella. It does not include, in the analysis of how democracies have died in the past, the analysis of specific social and economical phenomena that may have elicited the rise to power of authoritarian personalities. It is almost vexing to state that the rise of power of Pinochet (a hard right dictator) happened under the same circumstances as that of Chavez (an extreme left populist).

Finally, although the authors repeatedly visit Latin American dictatorships in look for examples, they never mention the fact that some of these (as in Chile and Nicaragua) would have been dead in their tracks had them not been financially supported by the US government. Perhaps the US policy of sponsoring dictatorships, when it fits their political agenda, has contributed to the political nightmare they are currently living in nowadays.