My dissertation tackles an understudied dimension of contemporary authoritarianism: how governments rendered "autocratic" by the Western gaze redefine the language of democracy in ways that directly challenge the liberal model. I turn to Vietnam as the primary case. I trace how and explain why the Communist Party of Vietnam has endowed democracy with distinctively illiberal meanings—those rooted in an imaginary of citizens as a unified collective whose shared interests and political will emerge through consensus under the Party's leadership, rather than through competition among divergent individual interests. My dissertation also offers evidence that this collectivist rhetoric of democracy shapes citizens’ political attitudes and contributes to the durability of the CPV’s rule. My research draws on a diverse set of methods, including qualitative and computer-assisted analyses of archival documents and newspaper articles, ethnographic observation, semi-structured interviews, and original survey experiments.