How Democracies Die by Steven Levitsky | Goodreads

http://ift.tt/2BkkwlE

After setting out these criteria and giving examples from the last 50 years or so of world politics, the authors spend most of the rest of the book trying to answer the question, "Why has American democracy worked reasonably well (though not entirely perfectly) since the end of the Civil War?" they explain all of the formal measures (separation of powers, checks and balances, etc.), but argue that these have limited effectiveness by themselves. America's success (such as it is) is primarily due to two unwritten norms that are not codified anywhere, but that have been reasonably well observed for the last 150 years or so.
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