Defending Parliament Responses of Mainstream Parties to Parliamentary Erosion

Historically, extremist parties have engaged in a process of parliamentary disruption, violating the rules of interaction and slowing down the lawmaking process. How can democratic parties respond and counter parliamentary erosion? I propose a typology of the policies of parliamentary defense that includes targeting individual politicians and collective responses that change parliamentary or electoral rules. I explore the demand of political parties for different policies of parliamentary defense and the conditions under which legislative majorities in support of such policies come about. Empirically, the article examines the responses of mainstream democratic parties to parliamentary disruption in Weimar Germany (1918–1933) and Third Republic France (1919–1940).