Books like Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy — picked by fans

This is a classic book dealing with the Terror during the 1789 French Revolution.

I like the way it shows how the French revolutionaries quickly resorted to violence. They talked about democracy, equality, and liberty but were quick to deny them to their “enemies,” chief among them other revolutionaries who were too “moderate” or too “extreme.”

In so doing, I like how the book shows how the French revolutionaries established a regime with what a modern observer would recognize as features of a totalitarian dictatorship. 

I like how Tilly's book emphasizes how democracy was often the outcome of popular protest.

Its analysis is careful enough to note that such protest could be peaceful or violent, as well as spontaneous or planned. As such, this book does not provide sweeping generalizations for the development of democratic institutions, and sometimes for their demise.

And its last chapter provides food for thought regarding democratization outside of Europe.

This book provided me with a fresh perspective on the 1789 Revolution in France.

I like its convincing analysis that the French Revolution was not a movement that directly caused or resulted from the Industrial Revolution.

Instead, it argues that it was a political revolution with “anti-capitalist” consequences: it solidified the agricultural pattern of small landowners, thereby explaining why France had remained relatively more agricultural than England or Germany by the turn of the twentieth century.

I like how this book brings 17th-century England alive.

It emphasizes how different England was from the country which we know today, notably by showing how religious outlooks shaped all aspects of life, from holiday celebrations to politics. At the same time, it also dwells on the economic and political factors which triggered the English Civil War in the 1640s.

Indeed, by ending its narrative with the 1688 Glorious Revolution and William of Orange's coming to power, it also provides the background for England’s international dominance in the 18th century.

I admire this book partly because I disagree with its central hypothesis.

Congleton argues that democracy emerged through a sequence of consensual constitutional bargains between kings and their parliamentary opponents, with the threat of violence playing little role. I find that claim provocative rather than convincing, and that is precisely what makes the book so rewarding.

I especially like the way it combines a clear theoretical framework with detailed historical case studies that put real institutional flesh on the theoretical bones. The cases are illuminating, deeply researched, and written by an author with an exceptional command of constitutional history.

It is a book I keep returning to, even when I want to argue with it.

Unarmed uprisings might overthrow dictators…but what happens next?

Jonathan Pinckney explains why nonviolent movements lead to more durable democracies and under what conditions. He combines an analysis of global data with case studies from Nepal, Zambia, and Brazil.

Policymakers and scholars interested in democratization have often focused their attention on elite negotiations and “pacts.” Pinckney convincingly shows that the most sustainable democratization comes from grassroots mobilization.

Kang’s sentences are short and tidy and clearly well-translated into English from Korean, and I was immediately drawn into the novel through the almost staccato rhythms of the prose. A small warning: this story comes with ghosts.

The plot is a fictionalization of a horrific event in Korean history in which soldiers opened fire on thousands of students protesting the 1980 military coup, killing somewhere between 600 and 2,300 civilians. The story was actively suppressed by the Korean government—hence the uncertainty over numbers.

Using this as a backdrop, Kang personalizes the violence and political upheaval of Korea in the 1980s, giving us memorable characters and the anguished and marginalized voices of the dead. It’s a novel I can’t quite shake, even years after first reading it.

Why do democracies seem particularly vulnerable to populist movements that promote conspiracies and science denial? It’s as old as democracy itself, argues Sophia Rosenfeld, who points to seeds of our current predicament planted at the birth of our republic. Social and technological stratification encourages groups, in the name of “the people” to reject advice and decrees of leaders, and seek political action based on their gut feelings.  

The roots of our national divisions run through our 250-year history and Nick Bryant, a talented British journalist and Ph.D. historian in American history has brought together the strands of that story in a readable narrative: demagoguery, the “constant curse” of slavery and its aftermath, the embrace of violence and a gun culture unmatched among democracies, the divisive nature of religion, cultural conflicts over change attitudes toward sexuality, the ongoing tension over immigration and America’s sense of “exceptionalism”...It is a painful story and not a book for Americans likely to resent an “outsider’s” critical view of America.

Bryant, who spent years in the United States as a BBC correspondent is frank to admit that he has “said goodbye to the American I had fallen in love with as a teenager,” but “my love affair with the United States has not ended.”

This book has become a touchstone in conversations about democratic erosion. What I found most compelling was how it uses global and historical patterns to explain how democracies can slide into authoritarianism—slowly, and often legally. It helped me connect institutional changes in the U.S. to larger global trends in democratic backsliding.

Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt argue that today’s democracies rarely collapse through sudden coups. Instead, they are gradually weakened from within by elected leaders who stretch or disregard institutional norms to expand their own power. These changes frequently occur under the appearance of legality, making democratic decay harder to detect.

Drawing on historical and global examples, the authors show how democracies slide into authoritarianism when two foundational norms begin to erode: mutual toleration (the recognition that political rivals are legitimate) and institutional forbearance (the practice of exercising restraint even when one holds legal authority). When those norms break down,… show more.