Democracy: How it held up during election 2020 and what it may look like going forward

Until late Tuesday, Christopher Krebs was the top Trump administration official overseeing election security. The branch of the Department of Homeland Security he led put out a statement last week saying the 2020 election was the most secure in American history. That totally contradicts more than two weeks of unsubstantiated claims by Trump of widespread voter fraud. Trump ended up firing Krebs — via Twitter.

Krebs later tweeted from his personal account:

Honored to serve. We did it right. Defend Today, Secure Tomrorow. #Protect2020 — Chris Krebs (@C_C_Krebs)

November 18, 2020

KCRW speaks with Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, government professors at Harvard and authors of the 2018 book “How Democracies Die.”

“How Democracies Die” is a 2018 book by Harvard government professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt.

Excerpted from How Democracies Die by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt.

We tend to think of democracies dying at the hands of men with guns. During the Cold War, coups d’état accounted for nearly three out of every four democratic breakdowns, and more recently, military coups toppled Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi in 2013 and Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra in 2014. In these cases democracy dissolved in spectacular fashion, through military power and coercion.

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Copyright © 2018 by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher. Reprinted from HOW DEMOCRACIES DIE Copyright © 2018 by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt. Published by Crown Publishers, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC.