<![CDATA[Modern democratic backsliding rarely occurs through sudden military coups or violent overthrows. Instead, democratically elected leaders increasingly weaponize formal legal mechanisms to erode democratic institutions from within. A primary vector for this subtle authoritarian consolidation is the deliberate misuse of emergency powers and executive decrees. Under the guise of managing economic instability, national security threats, or public health crises, executive actors exploit open-ended constitutional provisions to bypass parliamentary oversight, dilute judicial review, and restrict civil liberties. This research evaluates how emergency powers function as instruments of autocratic legalism and abusive constitutionalism, and formulates institutional design mechanisms to build constitutional resilience. Utilizing a normative legal research methodology combined with comparative constitutional theory, this study examines executive decree practices, judicial deference patterns, and emergency governance frameworks. The analysis demonstrates that existing emergency constitutional models are dangerously vulnerable to executive aggrandizement due to subjective standards of compelling urgency, weak temporal boundaries, and deferred judicial scrutiny. To counteract this vulnerability, this paper articulates a resilient constitutional framework anchored in four structural pillars: rigid substantive definitions of state necessity, non-derogable democratic baselines, mandatory supermajority legislative ratification with automatic sunset provisions, and expedited, non-deferential judicial review.]]>
Copyrights © 2026
