The Midtown Scholar Bookstore and democracyFIRST are honored to welcome Harvard University political scientist Daniel Ziblatt to Harrisburg for a conversation and signing on his books, HOW DEMOCRACIES DIE and TYRANNY OF THE MINORITY. Ziblatt will be in conversation with former U.S. congressman Conor Lamb.This event is free and open to the public.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Comprehensive, enlightening, and terrifyingly timely.”—The New York Times Book Review (Editors' Choice)
WINNER OF THE GOLDSMITH BOOK PRIZE • SHORTLISTED FOR THE LIONEL GELBER PRIZE • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post • Time • Foreign Affairs • WBUR • Paste
Donald Trump’s presidency has raised a question that many of us never thought we’d be asking: Is our democracy in danger? Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt have spent more than twenty years studying the breakdown of democracies in Europe and Latin America, and they believe the answer is yes. Democracy no longer ends with a bang—in a revolution or military coup—but with a whimper: the slow, steady weakening of critical institutions, such as the judiciary and the press, and the gradual erosion of long-standing political norms. The good news is that there are several exit ramps on the road to authoritarianism. The bad news is that, by electing Trump, we have already passed the first one.
Drawing on decades of research and a wide range of historical and global examples, from 1930s Europe to contemporary Hungary, Turkey, and Venezuela, to the American South during Jim Crow, Levitsky and Ziblatt show how democracies die. Now the question is, can our democracy be saved?
About the Speakers:
Daniel Ziblatt is the director of Harvard University's Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies where he is also Eaton Professor of Government at Harvard University. He leads a research group based in Germany at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center. His research focuses on Europe and the comparative study of democracy. He is the author of four books, including How Democracies Die (2018), co-authored with Steven Levitsky, a New York Times best-seller and described by The Economist magazine as "the most important book of the Trump era." The book has been translated into thirty languages. In 2023, he published Tyranny of the Minority (w/ Steve Levitsky), an analysis of American democracy in comparative perspective, also a New York Times bestseller. Prior to this, he was the author of the prize-winning book Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy (Cambridge University Press, 2017), a history of democracy in Europe, in addition to a book on European state-building entitled Structuring the State (Princeton University Press, 2006). In 2023, Ziblatt was elected member of the American Academy for Arts and Sciences.
Conor Lamb is an attorney and politician who served as the U.S. representative for Pennsylvania's 17th congressional district from 2018 to 2023. He is a Distinguished Lecturer of Law, teaching a course in Faith & Democracy at Duquesne University, and previously served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the city of Pittsburgh. He received his J.D. degree from the University of Pennsylvania.
