The play book; What is happening in America today is the same scene that has played out in various countries across the globe in the 21st century.

From Hungary to Turkey to Poland to Russia to India, democracies collapse into autocracy not after a strongman seizes control of the military or through violent coups but through legal machinations that cement their control and neuter their opposition. They don’t necessarily end elections or entirely eliminate their opponents. Instead, they put their thumb on the scale to ensure elections go their way and that their opponents are weak.

Scheppele named this process of seizing power autocratic legalism in a 2018 paper of the same name. Steven Levitsky, the Harvard University political scientist and co-author of “How Democracies Die,” refers to the outcome of this process, which maintains the veneer of democracy, as competitive authoritarianism.

The government would not descend into fascism or single party dictatorship, but rather weaponize state institutions and deploy them pretty systematically to punish rivals and to protect allies, and to bully and harass much of civil society into silence or onto the political sidelines,” Levitsky said.