Democracy for the minority, by the minority

With Donald Trump likely to storm back to power on their dime, their contribution to powering the cause of far-right minorities is no less disturbing

Tyranny of the Minority: How to Reverse an Authoritarian Turn and Forge a Democracy for All

Authors: Steven Levitsky & Daniel Ziblatt

Publisher: Penguin

Pages: 388

Price: Rs 799

In 2018, Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt wrote a despairing book titled How Democracies Die, a study of the rise of authoritarian democracy with reference to the US and Donald Trump’s election in 2016. Among other things, they wrote of the failure of the political class to observe the “soft guardrails of democracy” — unwritten rules of mutual toleration to allow for healthy political debate — as a key reason for the demise of