Contemporary autocrats, just like any other types of regimes, need legitimacy for survival. Yet, they exist in a Liberal International Order (LIO) that enshrines liberal democracy as the benchmark of good governance. Illiberal authoritarian regimes thus face a peculiar dilemma: renouncing democracy means sacrificing legitimacy, while naively mimicking it validates the very liberal democratic standards that can be exploited by pro-liberal-democracy actors to challenge authoritarian rule. What do they do? Autocrats redefine democracy altogether, in ways that challenge the Western liberal model. My book-style dissertation study the "why", "how", and "so what" of this phenomenon. I zoom into Vietnam as the primary case.