Daniel Ziblatt is the director of Harvard University's Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies (CES) where he is also Eaton Professor of the Science of Government.
His research focuses on the comparative study of democracy with a focus on Europe and the United States. He is the author (with Steven Levitsky) of How Democracies Die (Crown Publishing, 2018), a New York Times best-seller (translated into over thirty languages) and described by The Economist magazine as "the most important book of the Trump era" as well as Tyranny of the Minority (Crown Publishing, 2023), also a New York Times bestseller. Prior to this, he was the author of the prize-winning book on the historical rise of democracy in Europe, Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy (Cambridge University Press, 2017) and a book on European state-building, Structuring the State (Princeton University Press, 2006). Recently, Ziblatt has been elected to the Bavarian Academy of Sciences (2025) and to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2023).
Ziblatt's writings also appear in outlets like the New York Times, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, and Die Zeit.
For general inquiries, please contact Assistant to the Directors and Programs Liam Downing. For media inquiries and interview requests in North America, please contact Director of Communications Gila Naderi.
Bischof, Daniel, Hanno Hilbig, and Daniel Ziblatt. "Wealth of Tongues: Why Peripheral Regions Vote for the Radical Right in Germany .” American Political Science Review (2023): 1-17. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055423000862.
Capoccia, Giovanni, and Daniel Ziblatt. “The Historical Turn in Democratization Studies: A New Research Agenda for Europe and Beyond.” Comparative Political Studies 43, no. 8-9 (2010): 931–68. https://doi.org/10.1177/0010414010370431.
Dasgupta, Aditya, and Daniel Ziblatt. "Capital Meets Democracy: The Impact of Franchise Extension on Sovereign Bond Markets." American Journal of Political Science 66, no. 3 (2022): 630-647. https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12585.
Dasgupta, Aditya, and Daniel Ziblatt. “How Did Britain Democratize? Views from the Sovereign Bond Market.” The Journal of Economic History 75, no. 1 (2015): 1–29. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0022050715000017.
Şaşmaz, Muharrem Aytug, Alper Yagci, and Daniel Ziblatt. “How Voters Respond to Presidential Assaults on Checks and Balances: Evidence from a Survey Experiment in Turkey.” Comparative Political Studies, 55 no. 11 (2022): 1947-1980. https://doi.org/10.1177/00104140211066216.
Ziblatt, Daniel. “Shaping Democratic Practice and the Causes of Electoral Fraud: The Case of Nineteenth-Century Germany.” American Political Science Review 103, no. 1 (2009): 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0003055409090042.
In 2018, Daniel Ziblatt received the following awards for his book Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracies:
