Referees, or neutral legal and law enforcement agencies, are critical to a functioning democracy because they ensure that the law applies equally to all citizens and politicians. In turn, they provide a key democratic check on the ruling party’s power. When rulers manage to bias the referees, however, they make sure that they only check the
other side’s power. While Fujimori captured the referees in an obviously unethical way, Orbán, Perón, and Chávez’s tactics are particularly sinister because they’re technically legal: each of these presidents actually had (or gave themselves) the legal authority to change the courts.