Which militant democracy? Assessing conceptual foundations and normative implications across time and space

Although militant democracy is not a novel concept, it has received renewed scholarly and societal attention in the past decades. As a result, the concept of militant democracy has “travelled” across time and space while analysing different institutional settings and events. However, the actual meaning remains elusive. According to Sartori’s work on concept (mis)formation, it is important to keep in mind whether the extension (i.e. the fact that the concept is used to cover more and more countries, thus is able to travel) goes at the cost of the intension (i.e. the collection of properties). Gains in extensional coverage tend to be matched by losses in connotative precision (Sartori, 2009: 22). What does militant democracy actually entail, and how far can this concept travel, both in time and space? Relatedly, to what extent does every liberal substantive democracy count as a militant democracy? If so, has the concept of militant democracy not lost its meaning and/or become trivial? And what does the application of militant measures say about democratic legitimacy? This paper aims to answer these questions by bringing together comparative empirical insights and normative reflections. Regarding the concept of militant democracy, a distinction should be made between theoretical foundations and empirical application. Empirically, I argue that the operational concept of militant democracy has to be assessed along two dimensions: legal availability and actual application of militant measures. I present a descriptive analysis of the legal availability and actual application of militant measures against parties in European democracies in the past century. Throughout history, there has been a variation in which parties are restricted. For example, the category of target parties and what is seen as “extreme” or “pariah” fundamentally differs when the period just after the Second World War is compared to the last couple of decades. This comparative empirical analysis will be linked to the concept’s theoretical foundations. The second part of the paper unfolds the concept from a theoretical perspective. This analysis will be compared to the previous empirical assessment and linked to the ethical or normative dimension of militant measures against parties. In particular, the discussion suggests that different normative justifications in favour of militant democracy have been given across time and space. Interestingly, my analysis underscores that these normative conceptions partly determine how the concept is used by democratic actors such as governments and courts. The paper concludes with an assessment as to how far the concept of militant democracy can travel, and what the analytical and normative implications are. This article contributes to the existing work on militant democracy by bringing together the empirical application and the theoretical foundation of the concept of militant democracy, the latter being a relatively understudied aspect in comparative political science. Due to a strong focus on the empirical application of militancy across time and space, its theoretical foundation experienced little scholarly attention, which erodes militant democracy’s connotative precision. Furthermore, the article reflects on how the restriction of political parties and their activities influences normative conceptions of liberal democracies.