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A Normative Exploration of the Militant Democracy Principle

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A Normative Exploration of the Militant Democracy Principle ‘Fighting Fire with Fire’: A Normative Exploration of the Militant Democracy Principle By Miles Roger Maftean Submitted to Central European University Department of Political Science In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Supervisor: Nenad Dimitrijevic CEU eTD Collection Budapest, Hungary 2018 Copyright Notice This dissertation contains no material accepted for any other degree(s) at any other institution(s). This dissertation contains no material written and/or published by any other person, except for where appropriate acknowledgment has been made in the form of bibliographical reference. CEU eTD Collection i Abstract The concept of militant democracy – a democratic regime that institutionalizes mechanisms and is authorized to protect civil and political freedom by preemptively restricting antidemocratic action – has seen a resurgence in the last years, as a response to the rise of extremist political action and the backsliding of democracies into more authoritarian regimes. The goal of a militant democracy has been to oppose anti-democratic attempts at dismantling democratic institutions through fundamental rights restrictions (e.g. freedom of speech, freedom of assembly). While much of the literature has been descriptive analysis by comparative constitutional lawyers and political scientists, others have approached the question in a more philosophical way. Contemporary political theorists ask whether the anti- democratic, illiberal nature of militant democracy can be reconciled with democracy. Theorists believe that democratic states do have a right to defend themselves from internal threats which seek to dismantle a democratic way of life, however, they often point to militant democracy’s paradoxical nature and attempt to limit the costs associated with rights restrictions. What has been missing from the literature is an overall normative defense of this institution. This thesis provides such a normative defense and posits a novel model, based on two-levels of justification: the principled level and the political-institutional level. The normative defense of militant democracy lies in its goal: to protect the underlying liberal- democratic values, principles, and norms: moral equality, respect, and toleration. Understanding the goal of militant democracy in this light provides a sound theoretical CEU eTD Collection framework by which to analyze why, whether, and to what extent, militant measures can be used to combat threats to a liberal-democratic state. ii Acknowledgements I am extremely grateful to my supervisor and mentor, Nenad Dimitrijevic, for his continued guidance, support, and attentive reading of all my work and the valuable feedback that he has given me. I would also like to thank Zoltan Miklosi Meszerics and Tamás Meszerics for the effort and energy that they took to read many versions of this thesis, for identifying weak points in my arguments, and for making the thesis much better overall. My work blossomed during my time at the Berlin Social Science Research Center. I am indebted to the Center’s faculty and staff during my time there, particularly to Mattias Kumm, who helped the dissertation reach its top potential. I would also like to thank Jan-Werner Müller for his contribution to the process as well. Finally, I am very lucky to have benefitted from the support of my dear friends who helped in many facets during the writing of this dissertation: Felix Bender, Viktor Ivankovic, and Fred Felix Zaumseil. CEU eTD Collection iii Table of Contents INTRODUCTION 1 1.1 Approaches to Militant Democracy 3 1.2. An Overview of the Thesis 7 CHAPTER ONE: STABILITY AND MILITANT DEMOCRACY: AN OVERVIEW OF PERSPECTIVES 10 INTRODUCTION 10 SECTION ONE: GENEALOGY OF THE INSTITUTION – THE CRISIS OF DEMOCRACY IN THE INTER-WAR PERIOD 13 1.1. The Path to a Constitutional Doctrine of Militant Democracy 13 1.2. Locus Classicus – Loewenstein’s Response 17 1.3. Loewenstein’s Lasting Contribution to Militant Democracy 23 SECTION TWO: DIFFERENT THEORETICAL APPROACHES AND PERSPECTIVES 26 2.1. Trends and Approaches – State of Research 26 2.2. Normative Analyses of Militant Democracy 27 2.2.1. Non-Interference Principles in Militant Democracy 35 2.2.2. The Transnational Dimension of Militant Democracy 39 2.3. Analytical-legal Analyses of Militant Democracy 40 2.4. Empirical Analyses of Militant Democracy 44 CONCLUSION 47 CHAPTER TWO: AUTONOMY, PLURALISM, AND STABILITY – A PRECARIOUS BALANCE OF THIS TRIAD 50 INTRODUCTION 50 SECTION ONE: LIBERAL DEMOCRACY: VALUE PLURALISM AND INSTITUTIONAL SET-UP 52 1.1. Constitutional Democracy: A Preliminary Identification 53 1.2. Legitimacy and Disagreement: Overview and Approaches 61 1.2.1. Proceduralist Approaches 62 1.2.2. Value-Based Approaches 66 1.3. Substantive-Procedural Reading of Democracy 71 SECTION TWO: STABILITY AND REASONABLENESS 73 CEU eTD Collection 2.1. The Stability Concern – An Overview 73 2.2. Reasonableness and Reasonable Disagreement 76 2.3. Public Reason 83 SECTION THREE: CONTAINING THE UNREASONABLE 86 3.1. What is Unreasonableness? 87 3.2. Containing Unreasonable Doctrines 89 3.3. Conflict of Rights Between (Un)reasonable citizens 92 3.4. Non-Interference Principle 96 iv CONCLUSION 99 CHAPTER THREE: DRAWING THE LINE – MILITANT DEMOCRACY IN ACTION 103 INTRODUCTION 103 SECTION ONE: STREITBARE DEMOKRATIE: THE GERMAN MODEL OF MILITANT DEMOCRACY 104 1.1 The Militant Nature of German Democracy 104 1.2 The Socialist Reich Party Case 111 1.3 The Communist Party of Germany Case 115 SECTION TWO: TWO-LEVELS OF JUSTIFICATION OF MILITANT DEMOCRACY 118 2.1 The Principled Level 118 2.2. The Political-Institutional Level 123 2.3. The National Democratic Party of Germany 127 CONCLUSION 131 CHAPTER FOUR: A TWO-LEVEL APPROACH TO MILITANT DEMOCRACY 134 INTRODUCTION 134 SECTION ONE: A NOVEL APPROACH TO MILITANT DEMOCRACY 136 1.1 Who is Affected? 137 1.1.1 Individuals 138 1.1.2. Groups and Organizations 143 1.1.3. Political Parties 146 1.2 When to Implement Militant Measures 149 1.2.1. The Action-Based Approach 150 1.2.2. The Attitude-Based Approach 153 1.3 Who Decides? 156 1.3.1. Legislatures and Executives 156 1.3.2. The Court as the Guardian of Militant Democracy 157 SECTION TWO: MILITANT DEMOCRACY IN ACTION 158 2.1. Justified Militant Measures: SRP/KPD 159 2.2. Problematic Cases of Militant Democracy 160 2.2.1. The National Democratic Party of Germany Revisited 161 2.2.2. Refah Partisi and Others v. Turkey 164 2.3. Line-Drawing Exercises 168 CEU eTD Collection CONCLUSION 176 CONCLUSION 177 BIBLIOGRAPHY 185 v Introduction Democratic societies are pluralistic. From a sociological point of view, pluralism is a fact: individuals differ in their socio-economic status, the way they were raised, groups they belong to, or the networks they establish and maintain. On a moral level, individuals hold different worldviews: they disagree on what is right or just, and defend different truth claims. When individuals function as political actors, these worldviews translate to radically different conclusions for particular public policies, causing contentious politics to occur.1 Pluralism leads to disagreement on the fundamental aspects of our society: how it should be (politically) governed, and what values should be prioritized over others when they come into conflict.2 Following from here, the goal of a liberal, democratic society is twofold: to create conditions for a free expression of legitimate pluralism, and to manage ensuing deep disagreement. The problem is obvious: citizens of a liberal democracy may find themselves at odds with the values that such a regime upholds and with laws it produces. What type of justification can be given to them for the demand that they obey the laws they disagree with? Such concerns are not merely theoretical. Democratic regimes sometimes come under threat. In such situations, we expect democratic regimes to defend the polity and affirm its core.3 However, this implies that the state must decide what actions are threatening (or are potentially threatening) and must choose the correct mechanism or process by which to CEU eTD Collection combat such threats. Not all state actions against certain threats are liberally-democratically 1 Lakoff, George. 2002. Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 2 Sleat, Matt. 2015. “If Modus Vivendi Is the Answer, What Was the Question (and Is It the Right One to Ask)?” Working Paper Series, University of Muenster. 3 Capoccia, Giovanni. 2013. “Militant Democracy: The Institutional Bases of Democratic Self-Preservation.” Annual Review of Law and Social Science 9 (1): 207–26. 1 legitimate. Take, for instance, internal threats to the democratic regime. Such internal threats can come from groups and organizations that use democratic norms, procedures, and institutions to affirm values and achieve goals that are incompatible with democracy (including the goal of doing away with democracy and establishing an alternative political order). A liberal justification of combating such threats is not straightforward. Still, many democratic regimes have institutionalized mechanisms that constrain or fully forbid the room for such political action and remove these agents from the democratic playground. A democratic regime that institutionalizes mechanisms and is authorized to protect civil and political freedom by preemptively restricting antidemocratic action is called a “militant democracy”.4 A democratic state cannot simply justify using restrictive,
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