An Alternative Model of Democratic Self-Defence: ‘Procedural Militant Democracy’

ABSTRACT An Alternative Model of Democratic Self-Defence: ‘Procedural Militant Democracy’. Lisa Hill and Matthew Nicholl University of Adelaide. The dichotomy of procedural versus substantive democracy has long pervaded the militant democracy (MD) literature. Under this dichotomous influence, MD typologies, theories, and case studies tend to associate the phenomenon with substantive democracy. If a procedural democracy enacts a militant measure, it is thus understood to be engaging in divergent substantive behaviour (i.e., privileging values over procedures) to reach a substantive outcome. In this paper, we challenge this general understanding of MD by proposing a new variant which we call “Procedural Militant Democracy” whereby militant measures would not be considered divergent but rather congruent. Drawing upon Robert Dahl’s proceduralist legitimacy criteria, we demonstrate how certain legislated measures––namely, laws mandating compulsory voting, truth in political advertising laws, and funding for public interest broadcasting, together with legal bans on political donations, social media for young people and even guns––represent “militant” prima facie rights violations that nevertheless enhance the robustness and therefore legitimacy of democratic procedures. We theorise that this suite of seemingly militant measures constitutes a procedural facilitation of substantive outcomes tantamount to democratic self-defence. These outcomes materialise as a result of the “substantive activation” of the people: in other words, parliaments elected by an already activated demos can produce non-repressive MD outcomes that, in turn, further enhance procedural legitimacy and civic activation to forestall anti-democratic threats. Within Procedural Militant Democracy, militancy is applied not so much to repress, but to establish and preserve the pre-conditions for civic activation, enabling ‘the people’ to act as alert and enlightened stakeholders in and caretakers of their democracy. Using examples from a number of democratic settings we show that, by virtue of this substantive activation, Procedural Militant Democracy offers a more effective and legitimate bulwark against anti-democratic threats than both its non-militant procedural and substantive counterparts.