Illiberal democracy
Etymology
The phrase was popularized by Fareed Zakaria in a 1997 Foreign Affairs essay warning that elections were spreading faster than constitutional liberty. In a striking twist, Viktor Orbán embraced the label approvingly in 2014, describing his own project as building an illiberal state.
noun phrase · /ih-LIB-er-ul dih-MOK-ruh-see/
A system that holds genuine elections but hollows out the rights, courts, and press that liberal democracy depends on.
What it names
A precise diagnosis for the modern autocrat’s playbook — keeping the ballot box while dismantling everything that made the vote meaningful.
Example
The country still voted, but with captured courts and a muzzled press it had slid into an illiberal democracy in all but name.
Related idea
It splits apart what plain democracy fuses; contrast pluralism, the tolerance of many competing centers of power, which is exactly the ingredient an illiberal democracy strips away while keeping the elections.