The STRONGMAN Framework · v1.0 · 2026
Subversion Techniques & Repression Of Norms, Governance, Media, And Nation
The autocrat brands himself a strongman; the record shows a weak man running a recycled playbook, the same moves, in the same order, for a century.
A MITRE ATT&CK–style knowledge base of the tactics, techniques, and procedures by which democracies are subverted from within. Twelve objectives, sixty documented techniques, mapped to detection metrics and evidence-based countermeasures.
Read this site in three moves. The framework below names the moves an autocrat makes. The trackers count those moves in the public record and feed them as telemetry. The Alerts console says which are above baseline right now and who is countering them.
Open the Alerts console →Democratic backsliding, like a network intrusion, is a campaign, a sequence of individually survivable moves that compound into regime change. STRONGMAN catalogues each move so the field becomes enumerable, detectable, and defensible.
The one rule that governs all use: nearly every technique here has a legitimate twin. Emergency powers, corruption prosecutions, media sales, and judicial reform all have lawful forms. The difference is never the act alone, it is intent, selectivity, pattern, and target. Every technique carries a “legitimate vs. subversive” discriminator. This is an early-warning tool, not a loyalty test.
Each technique maps to a data source and an alert condition, live where the data exists and disclosed where it doesn't. Coverage map →
STRONGMAN synthesizes existing work rather than reinventing it. Structure adapted from established threat-modeling and backsliding frameworks; evidence drawn from standing datasets and primary-source archives.
Sourcing discipline. Reach and amplification are documented where effects are not; the UN’s Myanmar finding reserves causation; big-business financing of the Nazi rise is a corrected myth (Turner); items flagged unresolved or allegation-level in the underlying research are stated at that level. Classifications (electoral autocracy, competitive authoritarianism) are the major indices’ judgments, attributed as such. Detection metrics reference V-Dem (Codebook v15), Freedom House, Freedom on the Net, and Access Now. Not predictive: roughly half of executive-aggrandizement episodes end with the incumbent removed, not with democratic death, which is why the countermeasure layer exists. Built from the verified companion report How Democracies Fall (2026).