The wiki expands the main guide into individual entries: a profile for every country in the case studies, explainers for the scholarly concepts the guide relies on, historical cases, and a glossary. The same rule applies throughout: every factual claim links to a specific, checkable source.
Country profiles
VenezuelaLatin AmericaBrazilLatin AmericaHungary ReversalEuropeEl Salvador ConsolidatingLatin AmericaNicaragua ConsolidatingLatin AmericaRussia Closed autocracyEurope / EurasiaTurkey ConsolidatingEurope / Middle EastGeorgia ConsolidatingCaucasusSerbia ReversalEuropeMali, Niger & Guinea Military ruleWest AfricaMyanmar Military ruleSoutheast AsiaTanzania ConsolidatingEast AfricaUganda ConsolidatingEast AfricaGuinea-Bissau Military ruleWest AfricaWarning Signs in Established Democracies (United States, United Kingdom, Italy) Warning signsNorth America / Europe
Concepts
Regime Types: How Democracy Is MeasuredHow researchers classify political systems as closed autocracies, electoral autocracies, electoral democracies, or liberal democracies, using the Regimes of the World framework behind V-Dem's reports.Competitive AuthoritarianismSteven Levitsky and Lucan Way's concept of hybrid regimes in which real elections take place but incumbents abuse state power so heavily that the system is authoritarian rather than democratic.Autocratic LegalismKim Lane Scheppele's term for elected leaders who use electoral mandates and constitutional and legal change to dismantle the constitutional systems they inherited.Democratic Backsliding and Executive AggrandizementNancy Bermeo's influential definition of democratic backsliding and her finding that gradual executive aggrandizement and strategic election manipulation have replaced classic coups.Stealth AuthoritarianismOzan Varol's concept of authoritarians who perpetuate power through the same legal mechanisms that exist in democracies, cloaking repression in the veneer of law.Spin DictatorsSergei Guriev and Daniel Treisman's model of modern autocrats who rely on manipulating information rather than mass violence, presenting themselves as democrats.Self-Coup (Autogolpe)A self-coup, or autogolpe, is an incumbent leader's unconstitutional seizure of extra powers, such as dissolving the legislature or suspending the courts, with backing from the security forces.
Historical cases
Nazi Germany: The Legal Seizure of Power (1933–1934)How the Reichstag Fire Decree, the Enabling Act and Gleichschaltung turned the Weimar Republic into a dictatorship in under two years.Italy: Mussolini's Rise (1922–1926)How Benito Mussolini went from an ultimatum and the March on Rome in 1922 to a one-party state by 1926, through a rigged electoral law, a fraudulent election and the murder of Giacomo Matteotti.Peru under Fujimori (1990–2000)How Alberto Fujimori, elected in 1990, closed Congress and reorganised the courts in an April 1992 self-coup, ruled until 2000, and was later sentenced to 25 years for human-rights crimes.