Steven Levitsky Quote
Challenges to President Obama’s legitimacy, which had begun with fringe conservative authors, talk-radio personalities, TV talking heads, and bloggers, was soon embodied in a mass political movement: the Tea Party, which started to organize just weeks after President Obama’s inauguration. Although the Tea Party framed its mission in terms of such traditional conservative ideas as limited government, low taxes, and resistance to health care reform, its opposition to Obama was far more pernicious. The difference? The Tea Party questioned President Obama’s very right to be president.
Steven Levitsky
Challenges to President Obama’s legitimacy, which had begun with fringe conservative authors, talk-radio personalities, TV talking heads, and bloggers, was soon embodied in a mass political movement: the Tea Party, which started to organize just weeks after President Obama’s inauguration. Although the Tea Party framed its mission in terms of such traditional conservative ideas as limited government, low taxes, and resistance to health care reform, its opposition to Obama was far more pernicious. The difference? The Tea Party questioned President Obama’s very right to be president.
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About Steven Levitsky
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.
He is notable for his work on competitive authoritarian regimes and informal political institutions. An expert on Latin America, Levitsky co-authored the 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.