Listener supported, WNYC Studios.

This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.

Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.

For months, years even, Democrats and even some Republicans have worried about the day after the election.

Donald Trump gave no sign that he would ever accept a loss. So we spent time worrying about the security of our elections. We

worried about state officials who would intervene to skew the result, about a Republican Congress

refusing to certify the result. Above all, we worried about another January 6th or worse.

Statements from Trump like, in four years it'll be fixed and you won't have to vote again,

that was concerning, to say the least.

So was his repeated threat to punish his political opponents and on and on.

But in the end, the election was peaceful and apparently fair, and Donald Trump won the popular vote as well as the

electoral college. This is not the first time in the history of the world that a democracy has

brought an anti-democratic leader to power. As we try to see where America is going now,

I called up two keen observers of our politics, Stephen Levitsky and Daniel Zibblat.

They're both political scientists, and they co-wrote the books, How Democracies Die, and Tyranny of the

Minority. Your book, How Democracies Die, was published in 2018, which is in the teeth of the

first Trump administration.

But our troubles didn't start with Donald Trump. How would you assess the condition of our democracy

now? I assume you're telling us that it's in considerably worse shape than when you published

your book, How Democracies Die in 2018. It is in considerably worse shape than when you published your book, How Democracy's Die in 2018.

It is in considerably worse shape. Just about every international organization that measures

the level of democracy annually across countries shows a pretty significant decline in the level

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