Steven Levitsky
Full visit: March 17-21, 2025
Full visit: November 3-9, 2019

• Director, David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, Harvard University
• David Rockefeller Professor of Latin American Studies, Harvard University
• Professor of Government, Harvard University
• ADW-PAL term: 2018-25
• Subject Area: Social Sciences
• Faculty host: Kenneth Roberts (Professor, Dept. of Government)
• Faculty co-host: Tom Pepinsky (Professor, Dept. of Government)

Steven Levitsky is Professor of Government and the Director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University. His scholarship speaks to pressing issues of our time in both the United States and abroad. As a preeminent political scientist in the comparative study of democracy and authoritarian governments worldwide, he commands extraordinary expertise in especially timely questions related to current affairs (e.g. “how democracies die” and what can be done to protect them).  His writings on political parties, informal institutions, and competitive authoritarianism have left indelible marks on the discipline of political science, and his most recent work on partisan polarization has made him a central figure in contemporary debates regarding the well-being of American democracy.

Levitsky initially rose to prominence with a major book and a series of related articles on Argentine Peronism, a body of work that broke new ground for political scientists in the study of party organizations and informal institutions. His subsequent work elaborated theoretically on informal institutions in social and political life – a topic that produced an edited volume and another set of influential articles.  More recently, Levitsky shifted toward the study of democratic and authoritarian regimes in different world regions. A series of articles and a co-authored book identified the different ways in which democratically-elected rulers can concentrate executive powers and whittle away at the institutional safeguards (or “checks and balances”) that are essential for democratic rule.

He is co-author (with Daniel Ziblatt) of How Democracies Die, which was a New York Times Best-Seller and was published in 30 languages, and Tyranny of the Minority: Why American Democracy Reached the Breaking Point. He has written or edited 11 other books, including Transforming Labor-Based Parties in Latin America: Argentine Peronism in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge University Press 2003), Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes after the Cold War (with Lucan Way) (Cambridge University Press, 2010), and Revolution and Dictatorship: The Violent Origins of Durable Authoritarianism (with Lucan Way) (Princeton University Press, 2022). He and Lucan Way are currently working on a book on democratic resilience across the world.

Levitsky has written for New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, and The New Republic, and he has been a columnist for La Republica (Peru) and Folha de São Paulo (Brazil).