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Article Review on What’s Wrong With Militant Democracy?

Carlo Invernizzi Accetti & Ian Zuckerman, “What’s wrong with militant democracy?,” Political
Studies 65 (2017).

Brief summary

Carlo Invernizzi Accetti and Ian Zuckerman’s What’s wrong with militant democracy?
describes the concept of ‘militant democracy’ while simultaneously discussing the problematic
nature of the concept.
To start with, the concept of militant democracy is defined in the article as ‘the legal
restriction of certain democratic freedoms for the purpose of protecting democratic regimes from
the threat of being subverted by legal means’. 1 Accetti and Zuckerman argued, however, that the
concept of militant democracy is problematic since it provides no adequate method for solving
the problem that it is meant to solve. Instead, it may even further undermine democracy itself by
making it more prone to authoritarian abuse.
There are two main reasons why militant democracy is considered problematic. First, the
concept is said to have an inherent arbitrariness in itself. Such arbitrariness stems from the fact
that there is no non-arbitrary way to distinguish what can and cannot be tolerated within a
democratic framework. A decision to exclude a presumed enemy from the democratic order can
then be always motivated by something other than the preservation of democracy. Furthermore,
the very act of deciding what or who must be treated as an ‘enemy’ is somewhat ironic since it is
a decision that cannot be coherently made democratically through procedures that have already
established and settled the boundaries of the demos (i.e. the “friends” and “enemies” of the
democracy in question) beforehand. To do so would need the re-politicization of the question of
membership within the political entity and, inevitably, the introduction of a foreign element of
authoritarianism within the very functioning of the democratic order itself.2
The second reason why militant democracy is problematic follows from the first one. As
Accetti and Zuckerman argued, “in contexts of stiff political contestation, the availability of
measures permitting an arbitrary exclusion of certain actors from the democratic game may
provide the means for those with the power to make this decision to exclude an

1
Carlo Invernizzi Accetti & Ian Zuckerman, “What’s wrong with militant democracy?,” Political Studies 65 (2017):
183.
2
Ibid., 186.
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indeterminately expansive range of presumptive enemies of democracy, so as to cover more and

more potential competitors.”3 In other words, since there is no clear and established criterion as
to who are to be considered as enemies of democracy, those who have the power to enforce the
decision can expand the range indiscriminately, making it possible for them to include potential
competitors even when they do not pose a legitimate threat to democracy in the first place.
Accetti and Zuckerman used three cases to illustrate this point: the KPD case, whereby the
German constitutional court dissolved the German Communist Party in 1956; Refah Partisi case,
whereby the European Court of Human Rights upheld a ban on that country’s Refah party in
2003 for its support of legal pluralism; and the Sahin vs. Turkey of 2005, whereby the same
court upheld a Turkish statute banning the use of Islamic headscarves in public universities.4
In trying get rid of the problems underlying the concept of militant democracy, Accetti and
Zuckerman proposed two alternatives for dealing with the same problem that the concept is
attempting to solve: “the first draws on the distinction between militant democracy and
constitutional or criminal law in general to suggest that democratic regimes can consistently ban
specific actions—but not actors; the second suggests that striving to include presumptive
enemies of democracy within the framework of democratic procedures (instead
of excluding them) may potentially have a moderating effect on their goals, by giving them a
stake in the democratic order, instead of a further reason for opposing it.”5

Reaction to the points stipulated in the article

Accetti and Zuckerman provided a convincing discussion on the problems underlying the
concept of militant democracy. Indeed, if we look at it from the lens of realism, it is hardly
possible to provide a non-arbitrary way of distinguishing what can and cannot be tolerated
within a democratic framework given that humans are naturally self-serving and, to some extent,
power-hungry. The implication of this is that the one who has the power to enforce the decision
to exclude will use such power to his advantage, regardless of whether or not such exercise of
power is still in accordance to the values of democracy.
Political theorist Miles Maftean shares the same sentiment as Accetti and Zuckerman. He
puts the point simply by saying that “once a democratic state has the means to combat threats,
3
Ibid., 190.
4
Ibid., 190.
5
Ibid., 184.
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this instrument can be used as an abuse of power rather than the protection of core democratic
values and institutions.”6 In other words, it is indeed difficult to speak of democratic self-defense
without succumbing to authoritarian tendencies. Maftean, using the case studies of Central
European countries like Poland and Hungary, further argued that another issue surrounding
militant democracy is that it is usually in the hands of illiberal democrats ‘who have the legal
means to target what threatens their vision of democracy.’ 7 These illiberal democrats use various
militant (and to some extent, undemocratic) mechanisms against their political opponents: they
crack down legitimate opposition through repressive laws on media, civil society, and
educational institutions. This is what is meant by ‘indiscriminately expansive range of
presumptive enemies of democracy.’ It implies oppressing everyone who appears to be a strong
competitor of the ones in power even when they do not pose a legitimate threat to democracy.
Indeed, the points of Accetti and Zuckerman, as well as that of Maftean, are relevant
especially when we look at the current political climate around the world. Media silencing, for
example, has been an ongoing trend elsewhere. Human Rights Watch Communications Director
Emma Daly said that government officials around the world want to have control over the media
since doing so would make it easier for them to do what they want. One of the ways in which
officials can suppress the media is by jailing journalists, usually on dubious grounds of
protecting the nation.8 In democratic countries with seemingly populist leaders (i.e., U.S. and the
Philippines), it seems like anyone who publishes anything negative about the government,
regardless of its verity, is automatically branded as a ‘fake news’ journalist. This is, of course,
undemocratic. It undermines press freedom - the freedom of journalists to convey information -
which is an important aspect of the democratic order.

Aside from the media, members of the civil society who provide legitimate opposition to the
ones in power are also being silenced under the guise of protecting the democracy or the nation.
In Canada, a democratic country, for example, numerous civil society organizations are said to
have been ‘pressured into silence, sabotaged by dubious political appointments, defunded,

6
Miles Maftean, “The Abuse of Militant Democracy,” Visegrad Insight, March 5, 2019.
https://visegradinsight.eu/the-abuse-of-militant-democracy/. para. 12.
7
Ibid., para. 15.
8
Emma Daly, “Rising Hostility to Media Threatens Real Democracy,” Human Rights Watch, May 3, 2018.
https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/05/03/rising-hostility-media-threatens-real-democracy-0.
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gutted, or effectively transformed into tools for the government's partisan agenda.’9 Sociologist
Alexis de Tocqueville clearly described the importance of civil society as those ‘associations
operating outside the sphere of government and economic life [which] were essential bulwarks
against any incipient democratic decay and despotism.’10 In other words, civil society provides a
mechanism in ensuring the proper functioning of democracy. It is then quite ironic how
organizations who are supposedly existent to keep the government from becoming authoritarian
are kept silenced for allegedly posing a threat to the political entity that created them.

Conclusion
Overall, the problems surrounding the concept of militant democracy discussed by Accetti
and Zuckerman are evident in reality. There is indeed an inherent arbitrariness in the concept
which can lead to anyone becoming presumed as an ‘enemy’ of democracy just because they
threaten the ones in power, and not even democracy itself. The alternatives provided by Accetti
and Zuckerman have the possibility of solving the problems underlying the concept of militant
democracy. However, subjectively speaking, despite solving these problems, some other
questions perhaps still beg to be answered: how viable can democracy still be in the face of more
and more threats? Does the increasing number of threats to democracy tell something else about
the effectiveness and efficiency of democracy as a form of government in this day and age?

References:

Daniel Stid, Civil Society and the Foundations of Democratic Citizenship, August 16, 2018.
https://ssir.org/articles/entry/civil_society_and_the_foundations_of_democratic_citi
enship#.

9
Silencing Civil Society, Voices-Voix Coalition, Accessed April 17, 2019. http://voices-voix.ca/en/facts/attacks-on-
organizations. para 2.
10
Daniel Stid, Civil Society and the Foundations of Democratic Citizenship, August 16, 2018.
https://ssir.org/articles/entry/civil_society_and_the_foundations_of_democratic_citizenship#. para. 7.
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Emma Daly, “Rising Hostility to Media Threatens Real Democracy,” Human Rights Watch,
May 3, 2018. https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/05/03/rising-hostility-media-threatens-real-
democr cy-0.

Miles Maftean, “The Abuse of Militant Democracy,” Visegrad Insight, March 5, 2019.
https://visegradinsight.eu/the-abuse-of-militant-democracy/.

Silencing Civil Society, Voices-Voix Coalition, Accessed April 17, 2019. http://voices-
voix.ca/en/facts/attacks-on-organizations.