The aspiring autocrat wins a democratic election, often by campaigning on a populist platform that frames existing institutions—courts, media, civil society—as corrupt, out of touch, or beholden to foreign interests. In many cases, they exploit weaknesses in electoral laws to translate minority support into a supermajority in parliament. This is precisely what happened in Hungary in 2010, when Viktor Orbán's Fidesz party won a two-thirds parliamentary majority, and in Poland in 2015, when the Law and Justice party (PiS) secured a parliamentary majority.
In the end, autocratic legalism teaches a lesson that democracies forget at their peril:
Example A — Hungary (post-2010, Viktor Orbán and Fidesz) autocratic legalism kim lane scheppele upd
In her landmark 2018 article, Autocratic Legalism (University of Chicago Law Review), Scheppele draws a sharp line between two familiar forms of governance. The first is —the brute-force law of dictatorships, where courts are rubber stamps and legal forms are mere window dressing for raw power. The second is liberal legality —the ideal of the rule of law, where general, public, prospective, and consistent norms bind both citizen and sovereign.
Analytic tools and indicators (how to detect it) The aspiring autocrat wins a democratic election, often
The European Union, initially paralyzed, has now activated Article 7 and budget conditionality. But autocrats adapted. In Poland after the 2023 election, a pro-European coalition began dismantling PiS’s judicial controls. However, Scheppele’s 2025 update notes a : Orbán and Polish PiS loyalists (now in opposition) are using constitutional complaints and administrative courts to sabotage the restoration. Autocratic legalism, once a tool of incumbents, is now a weapon for obstructionist minorities .
One of Scheppele’s most enduring contributions to the literature is her metaphor of the "Frankenstate." Drawing on the image of Frankenstein’s monster, she describes how autocrats stitch together their regimes using bits and pieces of established democratic systems. They do not invent new, alien forms of government; rather, they find the worst, most repressive elements of various constitutions and combine them into a monster that can overpower the democratic host. In the end, autocratic legalism teaches a lesson
Packing supreme and constitutional courts via expanding the bench.
When a government starts removing senior judges or changing the composition of supreme courts, democracy is at risk.