Short definitions of the terms used across this site. Each term links to a full wiki entry or to the source that defines it.
- Autocratic legalism
- Using electoral mandates and constitutional and legal change to dismantle a democratic constitutional order (Kim Lane Scheppele).
- Autocratization
- A substantial decline in a country's democratic qualities; the trend V-Dem's annual Democracy Report tracks.
- Autogolpe
- See Self-coup.
- Closed autocracy
- A regime with no multi-party elections for the chief executive or legislature.
- A hybrid regime with real electoral competition in which incumbents abuse state power so heavily that it is authoritarian (Levitsky and Way).
- Democratic backsliding
- The state-led debilitation or elimination of the institutions sustaining an existing democracy (Nancy Bermeo).
- Electoral autocracy
- A regime with multi-party elections but without the freedoms that make them meaningful.
- Electoral democracy
- A regime with meaningful, free and fair multi-party elections for the executive and legislature.
- Enabling Act
- The March 1933 German law that let Hitler's cabinet legislate without the Reichstag.
- Executive aggrandizement
- The gradual dismantling of checks on an elected executive, usually through legal channels.
- Gleichschaltung
- The Nazi "coordination" of all independent institutions under party control, 1933–1934.
- Liberal democracy
- An electoral democracy that also protects individual and minority rights and constrains the executive through courts and legislature.
- Promissory coup
- A coup presented as a temporary rescue of democracy, with a promise of elections.
- Regimes of the World (RoW)
- The four-category regime classification used by V-Dem.
- Reichstag Fire Decree
- The February 28, 1933 emergency decree that suspended civil liberties in Germany.
- Self-coup
- An incumbent's unconstitutional seizure of extra powers, such as closing the legislature, typically with military backing.
- Spin dictator
- A modern autocrat who relies on information manipulation more than mass violence (Guriev and Treisman).
- Perpetuating power through the same legal mechanisms that exist in democracies (Ozan Varol).
- Strategic electoral manipulation
- Tilting the electoral field before election day rather than through blatant fraud.