Abstract
Threatened by parasitic antidemocrats, a functioning democracy can perish in one of two ironic ways. In the first case, antidemocrats use the very assets of democracy as weapons against it. Left unfettered, they exercise their political liberties with a view to deny these liberties to everyone else. The main concern of most advocates of militant democracy has been to avert this outcome. But a vigorous defense of democracy is not without risks. It could lead to what Alexander Kirshner calls “the paradox of militant democracy.” The very effort to save democracy could cause its demise. The problem is not—or not only—that some militant actions are inherently undemocratic, but rather that, in hoping to create the best conditions for democracy, democrats may end up undermining it altogether.
The purpose of this book is to provide a normative theory that would help us find the morally adequate response to antidemocrats, depending on the severity of the danger they represent. Militant actions, according to Kirshner, have to be proportionate to the threat in a given context, and they should carefully consider the interests that all persons, including antidemocrats, have in political liberty. This is not the conventional view. Political philosophers typically offer theories of militant democracy that are ideal and abstract—and hence oblivious to the varieties of antidemocratic threats in the real world. Also, these theories tend to disregard the interests of antidemocrats.
Kirshner’s theory—named the “self-limiting theory of militant democracy” after Adam Michnik’s idea of a self-limiting revolution—consists of three principles. The first is the participatory principle. It establishes that both democrats and antidemocrats should enjoy political rights. These rights protect important interests. Kirshner contends that the idea of the antidemocrat who cares for nothing but the demise of democracy is largely a myth. Antidemocrats are persons who also have an interest in, say, a better quality of life, and they should be allowed to pursue it in the political arena within certain limits. Which limits? This is where the second principle—the principle of limited intervention—comes in. According to this principle, political liberty can be restricted only in so far as it is necessary to prevent antidemocrats from undermining the political liberty of other citizens. Militant actions are not justified to advance other ends, such as creating a more perfect or just representative system. Lastly, we have the principle of democratic responsibility. Since it is hardly possible to thwart the illegitimate interests of antidemocrats and at the same time allow them to fully pursue their legitimate interests, we ought to acknowledge the democratic costs of militant actions, and try our best to minimize and repair the harm.
The bulk of the book analyzes three different cases of antidemocratic threats in light of the self-limiting theory. First, there are contexts in which antidemocrats do not endanger the stability of the regime but are nonetheless capable of curtailing the political liberties of some citizens. Think, for instance, of small parties with racist membership rules. If we take freedom of association seriously, some argue, we should do nothing about such cases. Kirshner, by contrast, contends that political institutions can be rightly designed to prevent parties from engaging in discriminatory practices without undermining the political rights of their members. The idea is to have an institutional background that tilts the playing field in favor of democracy.
If antidemocrats, however, increase their power and pose a comprehensive threat to representative institutions (i.e., if they exhibit the capacity and intent to shut down the democratic process), we face a different kind of challenge. Since eventually it will be too late to act to defend democracy, we have to consider preventive interventions, such as banning a party or removing a government from office. In these cases, Kirshner argues that even though all preventive interventions are democratically illegitimate they may still be justified for the sake of preserving democracy. From this point of view, preventive interventions resemble revolutionary actions within oppressive systems: while inherently illegitimate, the objective of having a democratic regime in place makes them morally sound. The self-limiting framework requires defenders of democracy to recognize the costs of their militancy and to rapidly restore the participation rights of antidemocrats—assuming it is safe to do so.
Sometimes, however, democrats might have to carry out severe militant actions for an extended period of time. This is the third kind of situation that Kirshner analyzes. The paradox of militant democracy is most likely to materialize in these contexts. Following the self-limiting theory, Kirshner argues that we should resist the temptation to fully and indefinitely exclude antidemocrats in the hope of creating the ideal conditions for the flourishing of democracy. Protecting the participation interests of antidemocrats as much as possible while combating their extremism is most urgent precisely when they pose the greatest threat, since it is then that we might feel the urge to deny that the enemies of democracy have legitimate interests in political participation. If democrats are in fact capable of thwarting an antidemocratic threat, they also have the capacity, and above all the duty, to do so without fully excluding anyone from the political sphere.
Kirshner’s analysis is rigorous and transparent; alternative viewpoints are sensibly addressed; important concepts are opportunely defined; and the writing is elegant, economical, and straightforward. The book sets a good example of how political thinkers should approach many problems of democratic theory and practice. On a rather common view, we first need to choose among ethical theories (for instance, consequentialism or non-consequentialism) to then shed light on practical questions like the permissibility of undertaking undemocratic actions for the sake of democracy itself. This book adds to the view that the relationship probably goes the other way around: we need to seriously examine actual problems, as Kirshner does, in order to develop and assess more general ethical theories. The argument in this book is grounded on the study of real, salient cases of militant democracy: the proceedings of the Equality and Human Rights Commission against the British National Party; the decision of the European Court of Human Rights to validate the coup against the Refah Party in Turkey; and the response of the American Congress to the threat posed by racist Southerners in the aftermath of the Civil War. As a result, the discussion usefully reflects the actual moral complexity of the challenge posed by a variety of antidemocratic threats.
There are some parts of the theory, however, that I find problematic. The idea of a “right to participate” in politics does most of the normative work in the self-limiting framework. Kirshner adequately spells out the nature and significance of the interests that persons have in not being entirely excluded from the political sphere. However, the notion of a “right to participate,” which lumps together various political liberties, is too vague to get the job done properly. Indeed, one can participate in multiple ways and in different stages of the political process, each requiring an independent analysis. We should separately examine specific political rights, such as the right to vote, the right to run for office, the right to petition, the right to associate, the right to express our viewpoints, et cetera. It is problematic to assume, as the self-limiting theory does, that these political rights are equally important. This is relevant because the moral costs of a certain militant action would then depend on the relative significance of the right(s) to be curtailed in that instance.
I agree with Kirshner that some political rights are an intrinsic component of a just society, and cannot be abridged except to prevent the violation of rights. The right to freely develop and express our political beliefs, within certain limits, would be among them. But the idea that all political rights in the standard list are similarly important is something that needs to be argued rather than assumed. And I am skeptical that such an argument could succeed. Perhaps even something as emblematic as the right to vote, contrary to what we are used to think, is not really fundamental after all, or as important as other political rights. That would be the case if there exists an alternative to universal suffrage that could be properly justified for reasons unrelated to preventing the rights of others from being violated: say, for epistemic reasons. 1 In any case, it is implausible to merely take for granted that all political liberties are necessary or equally important to protect the interests that Kirshner identifies, and hence equally significant for purposes of identifying the proper response to antidemocratic threats.
I should say, however, that the failure to examine the relative value of different political rights is rather common in the discipline, not a distinctive feature of this study. It is time for all of us to eschew the “right to participate” or “right to have a say” as the unit of analysis in democratic theory. In the present case, addressing the issue would lead to the improvement of an already compelling theory—a theory that any serious study on the topic of militant democracy will have to discuss.