How to spot a slow-motion coup

In the wake of the U.S. midterm elections, Kim Lane Scheppele is relieved that the electoral process ran smoothly. Yet she believes there is still reason to fear for the health of American democracy. She argues that not all government coups require long knives, tanks, kidnapped politicians, renegade army officers or even clear illegality.

There’s such a thing as “constitutional” coup, says the Princeton politics professor.

This type of coup gradually overcomes safeguards through legal and norm-changing measures, using the tools of democracy itself, until all that remains is one-party autocratic rule. Scheppele draws on her years living in Hungary and Russia, plus her study of democratic collapses around the world, to propose a ten-point checklist that helps us spot when such a constitutional coup is underway. And like many American experts on autocracy, she’s now turning her analytic gaze on her own country.