This article by Max Fisher is published by the New York Times. Here is an excerpt:

If you look for international parallels to the moment last year when Vice President Mike Pence refused to bow to pressure from President Donald J. Trump to help overturn their election defeat, something quickly becomes clear.

Such crises, with democracy’s fate left to a handful of officials, rarely resolve purely on legal or constitutional principles, even if those might later be cited as justification.

Rather, their outcome is usually determined by whichever political elites happen to form a quick critical mass in favor of one result. And those officials are left to follow whatever motivation — principle, partisan antipathy, self-interest — happens to move them.

Read this interesting perspective here.