Daniel Ziblatt eis the Eaton Professor of the Science of Government and the director of the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies (CES) at Harvard University. Ziblatt is widely recognized for his expertise in the study of European politics, democracy, state-building, and historical political economy. He has authored four influential books, including How Democracies Die (Crown Publishing Group, 2018), co-authored with Steve Levitsky. This book quickly became a New York Times best seller and was described by The Economist magazine as “the most important book of the Trump era.” The work has been translated into thirty languages, a testament to its global relevance in analyzing the pressing and contemporary threats to democracy.

In 2017, Ziblatt published Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy (Cambridge University Press, 2017), a comprehensive and highly regarded account of the history of democracy in Europe. This seminal work won the American Political Science Association’s prestigious 2018 Woodrow Wilson Prize for the best book in government and international relations, as well as the American Sociological Association’s 2018 Barrington Moore Prize.

Both awards underscore the academic significance and far-reaching impact of Ziblatt’s scholarship in understanding the complex evolution of democracy across diverse historical and sociopolitical contexts. Ziblatt’s most recent book, also co-authored with Steve Levitsky, is entitled Tyranny of the Minority (Crown Publishing Group, 2023). This critically acclaimed book places America’s ongoing transition into a multiracial democracy within a broader comparative and historical perspective, revealing the distinctive vulnerabilities and challenges inherent in the U.S. constitutional order. Through this work, Ziblatt continues to contribute essential and thought-provoking analysis on the formidable challenges that modern democracies face in the twenty-first century.