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Citizens’ Actions against Non-liberal-democratic Parties

Part of: Militant Democracy, Populism, Illiberalism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 September 2022

Tore Vincents Olsen
Tore Vincents Olsen*
Affiliation:
Associate professor, Department of Political Science, Aarhus University, Denmark; email. tvo@ps.au.dk.
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Abstract

Political parties are important for the functioning and consolidation of democracy – citizens should defend their rights against parties with agendas that conflict with the principles of liberal democracy – the types of actions that are permissible for citizens depends on the conditions of political legitimacy and the closeness to power of non-liberal-democratic parties – theories of both (un-)civil disobedience and violent self-defence are relevant here

Type
Articles
Information
European Constitutional Law Review , Volume 18 , Issue 3 , September 2022 , pp. 466 - 487
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Univeristy of Amsterdam

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Footnotes

This study was in part funded by the Carlsberg Foundation (grant number CF20-0008) and in part by the Department of Political Science, Aarhus University. I am grateful for comments from my colleagues on the Populism and Democratic Defence in Europe project (2020-2024), in the Political Theory Section at the Department of Political Science, Aarhus University, and in the ECPR Prague Joint Sessions workshop on New Challengers and Challenges, 17–28 May 2021. A special thanks to two anonymous reviewers for the European Constitutional Law Review and to Fabio Wolkenstein, Renaud-Philippe Garner, Angela Bourne and Bastiaan Rijpkema for detailed comments on earlier drafts of the paper.

References

1 For reviews see J-W. Müller, ‘Protecting Popular Self-government from the People? New Normative Perspectives on Militant Democracy’, 19 Annual Review of Political Science (2016) p. 249; G. Capoccia, ‘Militant Democracy: The Institutional Bases of Democratic Self-preservation’, 9 Annual Review of Law and Social Science (2013) p. 207.

2 See e.g. D. Runciman, How Democracy Ends (Profile Books 2018); S. Levitsky and D. Ziblatt, How Democracies Die (Broadway Books 2018).

3 J.-W. Müller, ‘Democracy and Disrespect’, 45 Philosophy & Social Criticism (2019) p. 1208; J.-W. Muller ‘Individual Militant Democracy’, in A. Malkopoulou and A.S. Kirshner (eds.), Militant Democracy and its Critics (Edinburgh University Press 2019) p. 13

4 Other organisations and groups, such as civil society organisations and social movements, can also have a negative impact on liberal democratic rights and institutions and therefore be legitimate targets of citizens concerned with the protection of liberal democracy. However, the focus of the present article is on parties. Parties are distinguished by the fact that their immediate purpose is to attain political power.

5 A. Lührmann et al., ‘Walking the Talk: How to Identify Anti-Pluralist Parties’, V-Dem Working Paper 116 (2021). Illiberal views are defined by: (a) a weak commitment to the democratic procedures; (b) denial of the legitimacy of political opponents; (c) toleration or encouragement of violence; and (d) willingness to curtail civil liberties of opponents and media. In fact, this happens in four out of five cases. Only in 18% of cases has it been possible to stop and reverse the process of autocratisation. See also J. Linz, The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes, Vol. 1 (Johns Hopkins University Press 1978).

6 M. Bernhard, ‘Democratic Backsliding in Poland and Hungary’, 80 Slavic Review (2021) p. 585.

7 Quoted from A.A. Kirshner, A Theory of Militant Democracy (Yale University Press 2014) p. 108.

8 Critics of the Court’s decision claim that it was based on faulty reasoning since the Refah did not in fact constitute an imminent threat to democracy (or secularism), see P. Macklem, ‘Militant Democracy, Legal Pluralism, and the Paradox of Self-determination’, 4 International Journal of Constitutional Law (2006) p. 488 and Kirshner, supra n. 7, p. 107-140. Please note that the case is only partially illustrative of what is at stake, as it is not a case in which ordinary citizens played any decisive role in the intervention to protect democracy.

9 Among others H.L.A. Hart, ‘Positivism and the Separation of Law and Morals’, 71 Harvard Law Review (1958) p. 593; R. Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously (Duckworth 1977); J. Finnis, Natural Law and Natural Rights (Clarendon Press 1980); L. Fuller, The Morality of Law (Yale University Press 1964).

10 F. Peter, ‘Political Legitimacy’, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2017 edition), E.N. Zalta (ed.), ⟨https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2017/entries/legitimacy/⟩, visited 10 August 2022.

11 J. Habermas, Between Facts and Norms (MIT Press 1996).

12 A.I. Applbaum, ‘Legitimacy without the Duty to Obey’, 38 Philosophy & Public Affairs (2010) p. 215.

13 J. Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Oxford University Press 1971) p. 371-377, 382-391; see C. Delmas, A Duty to Resist: When Disobedience Should Be Uncivil (Oxford University Press 2018) for a recent version of the argument.

14 E.g. B. Williams, In the Beginning Was the Deed, ed. G. Hawthorn (Princeton University Press 2005).

15 L. Vinx, ‘Democratic Equality and Militant Democracy’, 27 Constellations (2020) p. 685.

16 B. Rijpkema, Militant Democracy: The Limits of Democratic Tolerance (Routledge 2018).

17 Rijpkema, supra n. 16, p. 133 ff. Here, I move beyond Rijpkema’s argument. Effective rights protection is necessary for having rights in the first place.

18 Lührmann et al, supra n. 5.

19 P. Niesen, ‘Anti-extremism, Negative Republicanism, Civic Society: Three Paradigms for Banning Political Parties’, 3 German Law Journal (2002) p. 1.

20 J. Habermas, ‘Some Further Clarifications of the Concept of Communicative Rationality’, in M. Cook (ed.), On the Pragmatics of Communication (Polity 1999) p. 3071.

21 J. Habermas, ‘Discourse Ethics’, in J. Habermas, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action (Polity Press 1990) p. 43.

22 C. Rostbøll, Democratic Respect: Populism, Resentment, and the Struggle for Recognition (Cambridge University Press 2022).

23 Delmas, supra n. 13; R. Celikates, ‘Democratizing Civil Disobedience’, 42 Philosophy & Social Criticism (2016) p. 982.

24 Habermas, supra n. 20.

25 It is possible to make a distinction between aware and unaware unreasonable citizens: see G. Badano and A. Nuti, ‘Under Pressure: Political Liberalism, the Rise of Unreasonableness, and the Complexity of Containment’, 26 Journal of Political Philosophy (2018) p. 145.

26 J. Rawls, Political Liberalism (Columbia University Press 1996) p. 64, fn. 19.

27 J. Quong, ‘The Rights of Unreasonable Citizens’, 12(3) Journal of Political Philosophy (2004) p. 314.

28 J. Waldron, ‘Introduction’, in J. Waldron (ed.) Theories of Rights (Oxford University Press 1984) p. 1.

29 W. Hussain, ‘Is Ethical Consumerism an Impermissible Form of Vigilantism?’, 40 Philosophy & Public Affairs (2012) p. 111.

30 C. Barry and K. MacDonald, ‘Ethical Consumerism: A Defense of Market Vigilantism’, 46 Philosophy & Public Affairs (2018) p. 316.

31 Rawls, supra n. 13, p. 371-377, 382-391.

32 Celikates, supra n. 23 and Delmas, supra n. 13.

33 Delmas, supra n. 13, p. 13-14.

34 S.A. Haslanger. ‘Culture and Critique’, 91 Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume (2017), cited in Delmas, supra n. 13, p. 14.

35 For critical review see W.E. Scheuerman, ‘Why Not Uncivil Disobedience?’, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy (2019) p. 1.

36 Delmas, supra n. 13, p. 17.

37 Delmas, supra n. 13, p. 17.

38 The defence of self-determination is part of the ethics of war: H. Frowe, Defensive Killing (Oxford University Press 2014); C.J. Finlay, Terrorism and the Right to Resist: A Theory of Just Revolutionary War (Cambridge University Press 2015). The right to defend with violence one’s status as a moral person is much more controversial: cf H. Frowe, ‘The Role of Necessity and Liability in Defensive Harm’, in M.E. Weber and C. Coons (eds.), The Ethics of Self-defense (Oxford University Press 2016) p. 152; A. Pasternak, ‘Political Rioting: A Moral Assessment’, 46 Philosophy & Public Affairs (2018) p. 384. See also Z. Kapelner, ‘Revolution against Non-violent Oppression’, 25 Res Publica (2019) p. 445.

39 D. Rodin, War and Self-Defense (Oxford University Press 2002) p. 47-48; R. Norman, Ethics, Killing and War (Cambridge University Press 1995) p. 128, Finlay, supra n. 38, p. 56-58; Frowe, supra n. 14, p. 139-142.

40 Frowe, supra n. 38, p. 139-144.

41 Finlay, supra n. 38.

42 Finlay, supra n. 38, p. 63-67.

43 L. Alexander and K.K. Ferzan, ‘Danger: The Ethics of Preemptive Action’, 9 Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law (2011) p. 637.

44 L. Alexander, ‘Recipe for a Theory of Self-defense’ and I. Fishback ‘Necessity and Institutions in Self-Defense and War’, both in Weber and Coons, supra n. 38, p. 20 and p. 275 respectively.

45 Kirshner, supra n. 7, and Macklem, supra n. 8.

46 Frowe, supra n. 38, p. 139-144.

47 Scheuermann, supra n 35; J. Brennan, ‘When May We Kill Government Agents? In Defense of Moral Parity’, 32 Social Philosophy and Policy (2016) p. 40.

48 A. Buchanan, ‘The Ethics of Revolution and its Implications for the Ethics of Intervention’, Philosophy & Public Affairs (2013) p. 291; Kapelner, supra n. 38.

49 Frowe, supra n. 38, p. 153-155.

50 S.F. Maerz et al., ‘State of the World 2019: Autocratization Surges–Resistance Grows’, 27 Democratization (2020) p. 909.

51 Buchanan, supra n. 48, p. 309, fn 15.

52 G. Sharp, Fra Diktatur til Demokrati [From Dictatorship to Democracy] (Informations Forlag 2011).

53 E. Chenoweth and M.J. Stephan, Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict (Columbia University Press 2011) p. 10-11; S. Nepstad, Non-violent Revolutions (Oxford University Press 2013) ch. 8.

54 J. Cohen, ‘Reflections on Deliberative Democracy’, in T. Christiano and J. Christman (eds.), Contemporary Debates in Political Philosophy (Wiley-Blackwell 2009) p. 247; D. Estlund, Democratic Authority (Princeton University Press 2008) ch. 8.

55 See the movement’s manifesto at ⟨https://www.6000sardine.it/manifesto2020/⟩, visited 10 August 20222. S. Hamdaoui, ‘A “Stylistic Anti-populism”: An Analysis of the Sardine Movement’s Opposition to Matteo Salvini in Italy’, Social Movement Studies (2021), online first.