Ph.D, Political Science. Analyst & Adj Prof: Authoritarianism, Illiberalism, Pol-Mil; Russia/Eurasia. Opinions own. BOOK: https://t.co/o2Oe4ogzPL
They were looking at the Russian Constitutional Court, which was very powerful and intervened in politics heavily... until it was wrecked in the 1993 constitutional crisis for siding with the wrong institution in a political battle. 
Dan isn't the first to the point about waves of authoritarianism (McFaul made it 20 years ago!), but it's well-stated here. The innovation is if demarcated by the Carnation Revolution (1974), the 3rd Wave only emerges in hindsight and wouldn't have been apparent at the time. 
On the one hand, we're a small team and don't produce reports at high frequency (some of our colleagues put something out every week or even day!). On the other, we're quite large as a purely Russia-dedicated analytic group. And our reports are Big.
If you don't know who he is, you're about to find out. It's inevitable. Total vibe shift, as they say. The intellectual cordon sanitaire is gone. Yarvin is an authoritarian theorist - he believes democracy is bad (also not real) and a 'CEO-monarchy' is a better governance model. 
Patrushev's statement is banal. He says DJT "relied on certain forces to which he has corresponding obligations. As a responsible person, he will be obliged to fulfill them" and "very often election pledges in the US can diverge from subsequent actions"
FWIW, the sentiment is correct in a general sense - people absolutely do 'go along' with authoritarian rule all the time. And the Interwar was the last great era of authoritarian institutional creativity. Out of it we get party-states, corporatism, the movement-regime, etc. 
The knowledge was passed down as an annotated slide deck, which was publicly released in 2018 as "Hidden in Plain Sight: CNA and the Soviet Navy." It's a presentation given by Brad Dismukes reflecting on his experience on the issue. You can find it here: 
And suddenly we go from is to ought. That's not an actual theory of the world! 
You shouldn't need to be convinced, but three points stick out.
The briefest of backgrounds is that the major Russian historian Sergei Karaganov wrote a piece in Russia in Global Affairs last week which claimed that the use of nuclear weapons might be necessary in the fight against the "new fascism."
1) Banning pol parties, coercing media, limiting free speech, etc are common enough in war, even for democracies. These measures obviously degrade the quality of a democratic regime, but that's the point. Political coordination is a valuable resource to wartime leadership. 
