Legal authoritarianism or when the law is used against freedoms

The image of authoritarianism has changed. It no longer needs tanks in the streets or coups d’état. Today, as the report warns Time, Space and Information: Lessons Learned from the Abuse of Law to Attack Civic Space/ Time, Space and Information: Lessons Learned from the Abuse of Law to Attack Civic Space (International IDEA, 2025), authoritarian governments are perfected in the halls of Congress, the courts, and the offices of regulators. They do not overthrow institutions, rather they empty them from the inside. They suffocate free media and NGOs with audits, lawsuits and custom laws. The weapon is the calculated abuse of the law.

The study, prepared by researcher Madeleine Rogers and for which a consultation was carried out with various social actors in Latin America and Central and Eastern Europe, analyzes more than twenty countries in the last 10 years to identify the patterns of what it calls authoritarian lawfare. All within the framework of the so-called democratic regression. It explains in detail the use of law and institutions as tools of political repression and social control.

The central thesis is that contemporary authoritarianism disguises itself as legality. New generation regimes do not openly violate the Constitution; They reinterpret it or change it until it is unrecognizable. They expand the limits of law to exercise centralized and discretionary power, they undermine counterweights, they change the rules of the game to remain in power, they inhibit criticism. They consider their majority—ultimately provisional—as the only legitimate one with no possibility of others being formed.

The report identifies three dimensions in which this phenomenon unfolds: time, space and information.

• In it timegovernments accelerate legislative or judicial processes to impose reforms without deliberation, or on the contrary, they extend them indefinitely to exhaust critical actors.
• In it spaceimpose bureaucratic and regulatory restrictions that strangle the work of civil organizations, independent media or universities.
• In the informationthey control the flow of public data, manipulate official advertising or censor with excuses of “national security” or “fighting disinformation.”

The result is a seemingly functional democratic ecosystem, but deeply corroded with self-censored media, intimidated judges and a civil society fatigued by endless litigation. The report calls this phenomenon “the legal suffocation of democracy.”

The report cites examples from different geographies. The use of “foreign agent” laws in Russia and Nicaragua; the judicial persecution of organizations in El Salvador or Türkiye; and the capture of media regulators in Hungary and Mexico. In all cases, the pattern is that legality becomes an alibi. Democracy is taken to its limits. As political scientist Nadia Urbinatti points out, autocratic populisms need democracy to live parasitically, even if they empty it of content to perpetuate themselves.

But beyond the global diagnosis, the text has immediate resonance in our region. In Latin America, the expansion of surveillance laws, reforms that reduce judicial control and the capture of autonomous organizations replicate that trend with local nuances. Mexico, for example, discusses and approves laws that expand the State’s ability to access personal data, geolocate citizens or block digital content. And, simultaneously, reforms are advancing that capture the Judiciary, weaken protection and suspensions that could stop these abuses.

International IDEA’s warning is as simple as it is urgent: a democracy without civic space does not survive. Contrary to the populist mantra, the right to express oneself, organize and supervise the Government is not a liberal accessory, but rather the immune system of democracies. When that system is weakened, the body politic may remain standing for a while, but it is already sick inside. In extreme cases, autocrats who play with the limits of their power within the framework of democracy, move towards outright dictatorship. The leap to absolute power without masks is always an option that some end up consummating, as in Venezuela or Nicaragua.

The report concludes with a powerful idea, stating that the defense of civic space cannot depend on the good will of rulers, but rather on institutions with “democratic resilience.” This implies mechanisms that limit discretion, protect those who criticize power and guarantee information independence.

In times where authoritarianism is legalized, this document becomes essential reading. Because the democratic setback no longer comes with a sudden blow, it is undermined little by little, it comes with a reform that no one read or that does not cause greater debate in public opinion. In this context, when the law becomes a gag and institutions become weapons, the defense of fundamental rights becomes an act of resistance.