Coined by political scientist Javier Corrales and famously expanded by Princeton University sociologist and legal scholar Kim Lane Scheppele in her seminal 2018 paper published in the University of Chicago Law Review , the concept explains why modern democratic backsliding rarely involves violent military coups. Instead, today’s autocrats rely on teams of lawyers rather than tanks to build illiberal regimes under a flawless veneer of procedural legitimacy. The Core Concept: Rule BY Law vs. Rule OF Law
: Transforming independent media into pro-government echo chambers through funding or "legal" harassment (e.g., libel suits). Entrenchment
Phase 2: Neutering the Legislative and Regulatory Environment autocratic legalism kim lane scheppele upd
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.
Autocratic legalism is a governance model in which authoritarian regimes use legal frameworks to consolidate and maintain power. This involves creating a façade of legality, where the government's actions are cloaked in a veneer of legitimacy, but in reality, the law is used to suppress dissent, manipulate institutions, and eliminate opposition. Autocratic legalism is characterized by: Coined by political scientist Javier Corrales and famously
Autocratic legalism occurs when a leader with authoritarian ambitions uses their democratic mandate to launch a systematic attack on the institutions that are supposed to check their power. Unlike old-school dictators, autocratic legalists:
To understand autocratic legalism, one must first understand the person who named it. Kim Lane Scheppele is the Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Sociology and International Affairs at Princeton University and Director of the Program in Law and Normative Thinking at the University Center for Human Values. Unlike theorists who study authoritarianism from afar, Scheppele has a history of immersive fieldwork. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, she relocated to Eastern Europe, living for extended periods in both Russia and Hungary to study the construction of new constitutional courts from the ground up. Rule OF Law : Transforming independent media into
: Leaders do not cancel elections; they skew the playing field through gerrymandering or media control so they cannot lose.
Scheppele outlines a typical sequence used to consolidate power under the cover of law: Autocratic Legalism | The University of Chicago Law Review
Kim Lane Scheppele, “Autocratic Legalism” (2018) and her 2026 EUI working paper, “The New Legal Arsenal of Illiberalism.”