Democracies don't usually fall to a general with a tank
Political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt studied every democratic collapse they could find, and the pattern kept repeating: the erosion always started with something technically legal.
The classic image of a coup — soldiers at the gates, a general on the radio — accounts for a shrinking share of democratic collapses. The more common pattern, documented across Europe, Latin America, and Asia in the twentieth century, looks slower and less dramatic.
A leader wins an election. Then uses the courts to harass opponents. Then rewrites electoral rules. Then investigates critical press organizations for tax irregularities. Each step is defensible in isolation; together they hollow out the institution from inside.
Levitsky and Ziblatt identify two unwritten norms that hold democracies together. The first is mutual toleration: treating political opponents as legitimate rivals rather than enemies of the state. The second is institutional forbearance: restraint from using every legal power available just because you can.
When the leader of one party calls the other a criminal conspiracy rather than a political disagreement, toleration frays. When the majority party uses technical majorities to pack courts or eliminate supermajority rules that protected minorities, forbearance disappears.
The Constitution sets the floor. The norms set the ceiling. And the norms, unlike the floor, have no enforcement mechanism beyond the willingness of participants to honor them.