Daniel Ziblatt

Daniel Ziblatt is the Eaton Professor of the Science of Government at Harvard University and director of its Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies. His research brings comparative politics together with political history, concentrating on democratization, state-building and the institutions that preserve or weaken representative government.

His books explain large political changes through parties, rules and choices made by political elites. Structuring the State compares the formation of Germany and Italy to ask why federalism took root in one but not the other. Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy turns to Britain and Germany, arguing that democracy’s stability depended partly on how conservative parties adapted to mass politics and responded to the radical right.

Written with Steven Levitsky, How Democracies Die examines how elected leaders can hollow out democracy gradually rather than overthrow it in a coup. Published in 2018, it uses cases from Europe and Latin America alongside United States history and politics. The book won the 2019 Goldsmith Book Prize. Ziblatt’s Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy received the American Political Science Association’s 2018 Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award, among other honors.

For a new reader, How Democracies Die is the natural starting point. It is accessible without losing its comparative scope, and its focus on party gatekeeping and unwritten democratic norms provides a clear introduction to the questions that run through Ziblatt’s wider work.