Steven Levitsky (born January 17, 1968) is an American political scientist currently serving as a professor of government at Harvard University and a senior fellow for democracy at the Council on Foreign Relations. 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.

Education

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.

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. He then joined Harvard University the next year 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. 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. He is an advisor to several student organizations, including the Harvard Association Cultivating Inter-American Democracy (HACIA Democracy).

Research

Levitsky is known for his work with University of Toronto professor Lucan Way on "competitive authoritarian" regimes, that is, 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. Writing about the phenomenon in 2002, Levitsky and Way named Serbia under Slobodan Milošević and Russia under Vladimir Putin as examples of such regimes. When collaborating, Levitsky brings his expertise on Latin America while Way brings his on countries of the former Soviet Union. In 2018, Levitsky published How Democracies Die with fellow Harvard professor Daniel Ziblatt. The book examines the conditions that can 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. The book was recognized as one of the best nonfiction books of 2018 by the Washington Post, Time, and Foreign Affairs. Levitsky and Ziblatt have also co-authored numerous opinion articles on American democracy in the New York Times.

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. They live with their daughter in Brookline, Massachusetts. Levitsky is Jewish.

Selected bibliography

Books

Journal articles