Backsliding is not destiny. Many attempts to entrench power have failed, and some countries that slid have climbed back. Studying those cases suggests which defenses matter, while warning that recovery is often messy and incomplete.
Courts and constitutional limits
Independent courts can stop entrenchment before it becomes irreversible. In 2010 Colombia's popular president, Álvaro Uribe, sought a referendum that would let him run for a third term. Colombia's Constitutional Court blocked the referendum, and Uribe accepted the ruling. In Senegal in 2024, President Macky Sall postponed a presidential election only weeks before the vote, and the Constitutional Council ruled the delay unconstitutional; the election went ahead and an opposition candidate, Bassirou Diomaye Faye, won. Courts work best when they act early, before they are packed, and when leaders and the public accept their rulings.
Opposition strategy
How opponents resist matters. Comparing Colombia and Venezuela, the political scientist Laura Gamboa argued in Resisting Backsliding (2022) that oppositions succeed more often when they use institutional and moderate tactics, such as lawsuits, legislative bargaining and elections, than when they use extra-institutional tactics such as coups, general strikes aimed at toppling the government, or election boycotts. Radical tactics, she found, hand the government an excuse to crack down and let it paint its opponents as the real threat to democracy. Venezuela's 2002 coup, oil strike and 2005 boycott illustrate the danger.
Coalitions and elections
On a tilted field, divided oppositions rarely win. Broad coalitions across ideological lines, sometimes sharing little but a commitment to fair rules, have been decisive in several recoveries. Turnout matters too. Yet unity is no guarantee: in Hungary in 2022, six opposition parties ran on a joint list and still lost heavily to Fidesz.
Civil society, refusal and nonviolence
Independent associations, unions, professional bodies, churches, universities and journalists give people ways to organize that do not depend on the state. Security forces matter too: when soldiers or police refuse orders to repress protesters or overturn results, a power grab often fails. Nonviolent mass movements have toppled dictators and defended elections in many countries.
Outside pressure
Foreign actors can raise the cost of backsliding, as when the European Union withheld funds from Poland and Hungary over rule of law concerns, or when regional bodies suspend members after coups. But outside pressure can also backfire, letting leaders rally nationalist feeling against foreign interference, and its effect is usually secondary to domestic forces.
A rough order of defenses
Taken together, the cases suggest a rough sequence. Early on, courts, legislatures and a free press can block or expose a power grab. Later, once the referees are captured, elections and broad coalitions become the main path back. At every stage, the willingness of officials, from judges to election clerks to soldiers, to follow the law rather than a leader's wishes makes the difference. Recovery brings its own dilemma: undoing a captured system quickly can mean bending rules, while undoing it slowly can leave the capture in place.
Worked example
Three recent cases show different paths. In Poland, the Law and Justice party (PiS), elected in 2015, changed how judges were appointed, took control of the Constitutional Tribunal and turned public broadcasting into a government mouthpiece, drawing rulings and fines from European courts. In October 2023, with record turnout of about 74 percent, voters gave a majority to a coalition of three opposition groups, and Donald Tusk became prime minister. Repair has proved hard. The new government's swift takeover of public media was itself criticized by PiS and some lawyers as bypassing the law, and debate continues over how to treat judges appointed under the contested rules without breaking the rules again. In 2025 a PiS-backed candidate, Karol Nawrocki, won the presidency, giving the party's camp a veto over much of the reform agenda.
In Brazil, President Jair Bolsonaro spent years casting doubt, without evidence, on the electronic voting system. He narrowly lost the October 2022 election to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. On 8 January 2023 his supporters stormed Congress, the Supreme Court and the presidential palace in Brasília. Institutions held: according to investigators, the heads of the army and air force refused to back a coup plan; the electoral court barred Bolsonaro from office until 2030; and in 2025 the Supreme Court convicted him of plotting a coup. Critics, including many Bolsonaro supporters, argue that the courts, especially Justice Alexandre de Moraes, gathered unusual powers over online speech in the process, a reminder that defending democracy raises its own questions about checks.
In South Korea, on the night of 3 December 2024, President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law, citing "anti-state forces." Lawmakers climbed fences to reach the National Assembly, and within hours all 190 members present voted to lift the order; Yoon withdrew it before dawn. The assembly impeached him, the Constitutional Court unanimously upheld his removal in April 2025, and a new president was elected that June. A legislature acting fast, citizens in the streets and soldiers who hesitated combined to defeat a power grab within a single night.