Laurence Claus (University of San Diego School of Law) has posted Tyranny of the One (38 Constitutional Commentary (forthcoming 2023-24)) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
In Tyranny of the Minority, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt call for a major overhaul of the American political system. Through well chosen stories in both this book and their earlier How Democracies Die, they show how readily threats to democracy can emerge from inside both American-style presidential systems and British-style prime ministerial ones. Yet their recommended changes come up short, because they would not stop an elected chief executive from using the tools of the job to make temporary power permanent. A recent stress test in Switzerland confirms what almost two centuries of Swiss constitutional experience suggest: the best defense against a charismatic candidate who wants to seize power and might subvert the system is not to let one person be chief executive. This review article examines the resilience of Swiss democracy’s plural executive, shows how glib and flimsy were the arguments relied on by constitution designers elsewhere to dismiss executive power sharing, and shines a spotlight on the real reason that so far only Switzerland governs without one person at the top.
