The worldwide triumph of the democratic system, widely expected following the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, has increasingly been called into question over the past two decades. Already by the end of the 1990s, the resurgence of violent nationalism, particularly in the Balkan, began to cast doubt on such facile optimism. Recent developments in ânew democraciesâ in and outside the European Union, such as Poland, Hungary, Russia Turkey, and most recently, Brazil, in combination with the rise of right-wing populism in all established democracies across the western world, have even fuelled doubts about the ability of the democratic system itself to survive, never mind triumph. 1 Some democratically elected governments actively and deliberately seem to undermine the system, with tacit support of the majority of the electorate that brought them to power. These developments raise serious concerns and have sparked attempts to curb such undemocratic tendencies by sanctions and international pressure.
Traditional elites in functioning liberal democracies are thus faced with the imminent question of how to prevent internal movements intent on undermining their institutions from gaining power. Some suggest the introduction of new institutional safeguards, aimed at protecting democracies against the whims of the vox populi. Such reactions indicate that democracy is, to begin with, not a fixed institutional arrangement. The extent to which a state is indeed democratic, depends not just on the regular occurrence of elections, but also on how it is organised, controlled, and run in practice. A state is (partly) democratic, Robert Dahl argues, if specific arrangements, practices, and institutions have been and are in place, such as the presence of elected officials, âfree, fair, and frequent electionsâ, access to alternative sources of information, associational autonomy, and inclusive citizenship. 2 Over time, however, democracies have developed in different shapes and forms within this broad frameworkâwith varying arrangements, practices, and institutionsâand as a consequence there is no absolute definition of which systems are democratic. Instead of a binary distinction between democratic and undemocratic, it may be more helpful to think of state systems existing somewhere along a continuum between more and less democratic, with varying institutional arrangements and practices, although even the key criteria by which to judge this continuum remain contested.
Following the defeat in 1945 of the extremist movements that had come to power during the âcrisis of democracyâ in the 1930s, democracy became widely idealised as a fixed ideology in its own right. Having become an important rhetorical weapon in the Cold War struggle, both theorists and politicians in the West either lost sight of, or deliberately ignored, the existing diversity of forms within their coalition. After 1990, the expansion of the democratic system across the world seemed to be an inevitability. In 2007, Charles Tilly showed that, over the past two centuries, the march towards democracy was in fact by no means a gradual, deliberate, and irreversible process. 3 Proponents and opponents of democratic government, with varying concepts and institutional arrangements in mind, have clashed time and again, leading to âwavesâ of âdemocratisationâ and âde-democratisationâ, such as we again seem to experience in recent years. 4
Ever since democracy was first established as a relatively widely used system of government in Europe in the nineteenth century, it has indeed been challenged by those opposing its fundamental values. Initially, such challenges came from those who continued to support the older forms of absolutist or elite government. Later, these were joined by ideologically inspired groupsâe.g. socialist, anarchist, and fascistâwho wanted to replace the liberal democratic system, if necessary by force, with their own form of government based on what they perceived as being the peopleâs will. As such oppositional groups became increasingly incorporated in the nation state at the beginning of the twentieth century, some of them began to strive for the abolition of democracy by using the instruments of democracy itself, like Italian Fascists, German National Socialists and various Communist Parties.
This raised the question how far democracies could and should go to protect themselves from their internal adversaries: anti-democratic groups and organisations in their midst. This question gained widespread political and academic relevance after the German national socialists dismantled the Weimar Republic in the 1930s, by using the very democratic rights and freedoms Weimar had provided. The initial response was generally to oppose banning any party, even those that wanted to abolish democracy. To do so, after all, would mean that democracy itself had become anti-democratic by denying the full freedom of ideas. The most prominent representative of this âfree market of ideasâ position during the Weimar Republic, was legal philosopher Hans Kelsen. Others were more wary of the dangers posed by the rise to power of Hitler. Karl Loewenstein, who had fled Nazi Germany, argued that: âUnder cover of fundamental rights and the rule of law, the anti-democratic machine could be built up and set in motion legallyâ. He and the Dutch scholar George van den Bergh, argued that democracies should become militant. To survive, a democracy would have to become what they called a âStreitbare Demokratieâ (commonly referred to as a âmilitant democracyâ), capable of defending themselves, by force if necessary, against anti-democrats. 5
The necessity to defend democracy had become evident after the 1930s. John Finn has shown that the proscription of anti-democratic parties subsequently became a common feature in western democracies, particularly in post-war and (post-)conflict societies, such as Germany after 1945 or Latvia following the fall of the Soviet Union. Although a number of parties were bannedâand some even suggested the introduction of âdemocracy guarantee clausesâ at a global levelâmany continued to harbour serious doubts about the political and legal grounds on which democrats might place those who they deemed anti-democrats outside the law. Politicians and legal scholars have subsequently fought fierce battles over the extent to which democracies should be enabled to constitutionally (or by ordinary law) ban âextremistâ political parties and associations. 6
As a consequence of the elevation of democracy to a fixed ideological position, opposition to the system in the post-war years became treated as a pathological symptom. However, in the 1960s new forms of systemic criticism developed, based on the democratic narrative itself. Such critics argued that the system excluded various groups from expressing their democratic will. Finding it difficult to achieve their goals through the existing institutions, this led to an upsurge in political violence in the 1970s and 1980s, mostly based on social-revolutionary and separatist ideologies. In response, scholars in the social sciences and history broadened the debate on how to deal with anti-democratic opposition by including the question how liberal democracies did, and should, defend themselves against politically violent or terrorist opponents. 7
In this context, Paul Wilkinson picked up the argument put forward by Loewenstein and van den Bergh in support of the right of liberal democratic states to proscribe certain antisystem parties. 8 In light of the rise of populist parties since the turn of the twenty-first century, this debate has again become relevant. Recently John Keane and Kristian Skagen Ekeli have developed this approach further, while also identifying the dangers associated with it. They argued that proscribing parties in practice undermines the stability of the regime, stifles open debate, and can lead to polarisation and political extremism among excluded groups. 9 Taking this a step further, the Dutch political philosopher Bastiaan Rijpkema has suggested that the essence of a democracy is its ability to revoke any decision taken. The only decision he argues that cannot be revoked by the system, is the establishment of democracy itself. The use of force should therefore only be allowed in defence of the mechanisms that make a regular, peaceful change in government possible. 10 Recent developments in what are generally termed authoritarian democracies illustrate the acute need to further define what these defendable mechanisms entail.
Discussions over the legitimacy of the use of force against antisystem groups, demand a fundamental evaluation of the conceptualisation and meaning of democracy within society as Loewenstein already noted in 1938. 11 In a comparative study of the post-war political debates in France, Italy, and West Germany, Pepijn Corduwener has shown that even among established parties there was no shared conception of democracy. They fundamentally disagreed on issues such as the basis of the economic system, the electoral system, the separation of powers, and the use of state institutions in defence of democracy. He concludes that, contrary to the general perception, there was no broad consensus even among those generally perceived as democrats on what constituted democratic credentials and political legitimacy. 12
What has received less attentionâso farâis the observation that not only democratic parties, but also those seen as their anti-democratic adversaries often lay claim to some form of âdemocracyâ as their source for legitimacy. In such cases, however, both sides have radically different, often mutually exclusive, things in mind when they discuss democracy, not only as a theoretical concept, but also as the set of institutional arrangements and practices. When oppositional groups challenge not just particular policies, but the fundamental institutions of (nominally) democratic nation states, both these oppositional groups and the states they challenge are forced to explain, define, and defend their very conceptions of democracy. Faced with a (democratic) challenge by what is defined as anti-democratic opposition, democratic parties have to (re-)define what they see as legitimate democratic forms and repertoires of opposition, as opposed to in their view undemocratic and therefore inadmissible manifestations. In effect, they have to define not only the meaning of democracy, but also its boundaries, offering an argument why certain ideas and groups fall outside the pale of legitimate democratic debate. The ruling parties in the German Bundestag , for example, labelled all violent actions of antinuclear movements in the 1990s as threats to that very democracy; these activist political repertoires could never be democratic, they argued. Oppositional contenders, in this case the Green party and the antinuclear movement, meanwhile, must also formulate proposals for alternative concepts, ideas, institutions, policies, or other aspects of the existing democratic state. This becomes especially pressing when these contenders useâor plead for the use ofâmeans that do not fall within the scope of the democratic legal order of the state that they are part of, or when their goals are considered undemocratic.
Such challenges to existing democracies have been based on a wide variety of motivations. Some groups criticise the existing institutional framework on ideo...