Steven Levitsky

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Steven Levitsky
Steven Levitsky, August 2025.jpg
Levitsky in 2025
Born (1968-01-17) January 17, 1968 (age 57)
Nationality American
Education Stanford University (BA)
University of California, Berkeley (PhD)
Known for Competitive authoritarianism
Informal institutions
Scientific career
Fields Political science
Institutions Harvard University
(2000–present)
Doctoral advisor David Collier

Steven Robert Levitsky (born January 17, 1968) is an American political scientist and professor of government at Harvard University and a senior fellow for democracy at the Council on Foreign Relations. [1] He is also a senior fellow at the Kettering Foundation, an American non-partisan research foundation. [2]

Contents

A comparative political scientist, his research interests focus on Latin America and include political parties and party systems, authoritarianism and democratization, and weak and informal institutions. [3]

He is notable for his work on competitive authoritarian regimes and informal political institutions. [4] An expert on Latin America, Levitsky co-authored the 2018 best seller How Democracies Die with Daniel Ziblatt (an expert on authoritarianism in interwar Europe), warning that Donald Trump and the Republican Party were engaging in rhetoric and actions that have parallels with the breakdown of democracy in other regions and historical periods. [5]

Early life

Levitsky was raised in Ithaca, New York. [6] [5] His father was a professor of psychology at Cornell University. [5]

He studied Spanish in high school and became aware of the Reagan administration policies toward Central America. [6] As an undergraduate, he took some courses about Latin America and "fell in love with the region". [6] In the summer of 1989, he visited Managua, Nicaragua, to do research for his senior thesis. [6]

Levitsky received a B.A. in political science from Stanford University in 1990 and a Ph.D. in political science from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1999. [4]

Academic career

Career

After obtaining his Ph.D. in 1999, Levitsky was a visiting fellow at the University of Notre Dame's Kellogg Institute for International Studies. [7] The next year, he joined Harvard University as an assistant professor of government. There he went on to serve as the John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences (2004–2008) before receiving tenure as a full professor of government in 2008. [4] [7] Although he had enjoyed living and studying in the San Francisco Bay Area, he always identified more strongly with the East Coast and was happy to return east when he joined Harvard. [6]

At Harvard, Levitsky also sits on the executive committees of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs and the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies. [8] He is an advisor to several student organizations, including the Harvard Association Cultivating Inter-American Democracy (HACIA Democracy). [9]

Research

Levitsky is known for his work with University of Toronto professor Lucan Way on "competitive authoritarian" regimes: hybrid government types in which, on the one hand, democratic institutions are generally accepted as the means to obtaining and exercising political power, but, on the other hand, incumbents violate the norms of those institutions so routinely, and to such an extent, that the regime fails to meet basic standards for democracy; under such a system, incumbents almost always retain power, because they control and tend to use the state to squelch opposition, arresting or intimidating opponents, controlling media coverage, or tampering with election results. [10] Writing about the phenomenon in 2002, Levitsky and Way named Serbia under Slobodan Milošević and Russia under Vladimir Putin as examples of such regimes. [11] When collaborating, Levitsky brings his expertise on Latin America while Way brings his on countries of the former Soviet Union. [12]

In 2018, Levitsky published How Democracies Die with fellow Harvard professor Daniel Ziblatt. The book examines the conditions that may lead democracies to break down from within, rather than due to external events such as military coups or foreign invasions. How Democracies Die received widespread praise. It spent a number of weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list and six weeks on the non-fiction bestseller list of the German weekly Der Spiegel . [13] The book was recognized as one of the best nonfiction books of 2018 by the Washington Post , Time, and Foreign Affairs . [14] Levitsky and Ziblatt have co-authored numerous opinion articles on American democracy in the New York Times. [15]

Personal life

Levitsky is married to Liz Mineo, a Peruvian journalist with degrees from the National University of San Marcos and Columbia University who currently works at The Harvard Gazette . [16] They live with their daughter in Brookline, Massachusetts. Levitsky is Jewish. [17]

Awards and honors

Selected bibliography

Books

Journal articles

References

  1. "CFR Welcomes Steven Levitsky as a Senior Fellow for Democracy | Council on Foreign Relations". www.cfr.org. Retrieved August 3, 2024.
  2. "Steven Levitsky". Kettering Foundation. Retrieved March 6, 2025.
  3. "Steve Levitsky, Professor of Government". Harvard University. Retrieved 2016-10-23.
  4. 1 2 3 Balakrishna, Aditi (December 12, 2007). "Popular Levitsky Awarded Tenure". Harvard Crimson. Retrieved 2022-03-31.
  5. 1 2 3 "This professor studies dictatorships. He helped convince Harvard to stand up to Trump". Los Angeles Times. April 16, 2025.
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 Ritz-Jack, Charlotte P. (March 24, 2023). "Fifteen Questions: Steven Levitsky on Democracy, Latin America, and the Mets". The Harvard Crimson .
  7. 1 2 Steven Levitsky curriculum vitae, 2009. Via Harvard University website. Retrieved 2016-10-23.
  8. "Senior Advisers and Executive Committee". Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. Harvard University. Retrieved 2016-10-23.
  9. HACIA: XXII Summit of the Americas: Faculty advisor guide (2016). p. 2. Available as a PDF file at the HACIA Democracy website. Retrieved 2016-10-23.
  10. Levitsky Steven; Way, Lucan A. (2002). "The Rise of Competitive Authoritarianism.". Journal of Democracy , Vol. 13, No. 2, p. 51-66; here: p. 52-53. Available as PDF file via Harvard faculty page. Retrieved 2016-10-23.
  11. Levitsky & Way (2002), p. 52.
  12. Berman, Sheri (November 1, 2022). "Good at Being Bad". Foreign Affairs. No. November/December 2022. ISSN   0015-7120 . Retrieved February 9, 2024.
  13. "Sachbuch". Spiegel Online. Der Spiegel. August 25, 2018. Retrieved December 8, 2019.
  14. "How Democracies Die". Penguin Random House. Retrieved March 13, 2019.
  15. Levitsky, Steven; Ziblatt, Daniel (September 20, 2019). "Why Republicans Play Dirty: They fear that…". The New York Times . Retrieved December 8, 2019.
  16. "Daily News reporter chosen for Harvard fellowship". The MetroWest Daily News. Retrieved August 18, 2019.
  17. Friedman, Gabe (October 27, 2015). "The 'lifelong Zionists' who called for an Israel boycott. In a Washington Post op-ed, professors Steven Levitsky and Glen Weyl urged economic sanctions on Jewish state". The Times of Israel . An Op-Ed co-written last Friday by two American Jewish professors has stirred Internet controversy, with the focus largely on their use of four words: 'We are lifelong Zionists.'
  18. "How Democracies Die Wins 2019 Goldsmith Book Prize". Penguin Random House . February 14, 2019. Retrieved March 14, 2025.
  19. "2019 Global Policy Institute Book Award Presented to Steven Levitsky". LMU Newsroom. September 24, 2019. Retrieved March 13, 2025.
  20. "Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way Win Juan Linz Best Book Prize". Weatherhead Center for International Affairs . November 29, 2023. Retrieved March 14, 2025.
  21. "Fourteen faculty named Cabot Fellows". Harvard Gazette . June 21, 2024. Retrieved March 14, 2025.
  22. Patel, Dhruv T.; Sundar, Saketh (March 9, 2025). "Levitsky Secures Underdog Victory Over Pinker at Latke vs. Hamantasch Debate". The Harvard Crimson . Retrieved March 14, 2025.
  23. Levitsky, Steven; Way, Lucan A. (February 11, 2025). "The Path to American Authoritarianism: What Comes After Democratic Breakdown" Foreign Affairs" (PDF). Foreign Affairs. Retrieved April 25, 2025.