Abstract
Decisions in democracy are binding not in virtue of being true or good, but on account of being an outcome of the majority voting procedure. For some, this is a proof of an intricate connection between democracy and moral relativism. The ‘militant democracy’ model, on the other hand, is premised on the idea that certain political actors and choices have to be banned for being fatally bad for democracy. This gives rise to the claim that protected democratic fundamental values of freedom and equality enjoy the status of absolute moral standards. This article dismisses the intuition that justification of ‘militant democracy’ depends on unpacking the relation between democracy and meta-ethics. Instead, following Bernard Suits’ analytical exposition of the important features of games, it demonstrates, first, how democracy is like a game and, then, it argues that a plausible justification of ‘militant democracy’ stems from its game-like character.
Whatever democracy might be for different political theories, it is first and foremost a governmental form, such that it enables a government by the people, be it directly or through their representatives. What distinguishes it from various forms of the opposing regime of autocracy is that it is built on moral values of individual freedom and political equality. However, a form of government in which political decisions are considered binding not in virtue of being necessarily true and/or virtuous, but on account of being an outcome of the majority voting procedure, is sometimes regarded as intricately connected to the moral philosophy of relativism. According to it, ‘no moral framework is objectively privileged as the one true morality’, 1 insofar as moral right and wrong, good and bad, justice and injustice, are always relative to a choice of moral framework. 2 The concept of ‘militant democracy’, on the other hand, is built on the idea that certain political actors and their ideas are not only ‘wrong’ and ‘bad’ for democracy, but that they constitute genuine ‘enemies’ to this form of government. This, in turn, warrants their expulsion from the democratic process. Such an expulsion, however, seems to suggest that the endangered democratic values enjoy the special status of absolute moral standards against which one can judge that, regardless of the context, certain actions and beliefs are morally right or wrong. Hence, the initial intuition tells us that a plausible justification of ‘militant democracy’ revolves around the problem of answering whether this form of government is grounded in one of the conflicting meta-ethical doctrines.
In the first part of the article I will elaborate on this intuition. I will start with a cursory overview of Loewenstein’s argument in favor of ‘militant democracy’. He seemed to believe that democracy’s moral fundamentals had the status of ‘absolute values’ that needed to be defended at all costs, but he did not explicate what the claim of ‘absoluteness’ of democratic values would amount to (section I). Such sort of claim has been for some time pursued by the highest clergy of the Roman Catholic Church. I will briefly expose this idea of the alleged connection between democracy and some form of moral absolutism (section II). Then, I will turn to a diametrically opposite argument, famously advanced by Kelsen, who held that the democratic idea was premised on the Weltanschauung of moral relativism. One of the regrettable consequences of such nature of this form of government is that it cannot principally exclude the outcome of its self-annulment (section III). I will conclude this part of the article by arguing that, contra prima facie intuitions, the theoretical debate about connections between democracy and meta-ethics does not solve the problem of justification of ‘militant democracy’. Despite conflicting starting premises, both doctrines lead to similar practical outcomes – to the idea that democracy normally protects certain fundamental values by taking them from the decision-making agenda. This, however, does not help us decisively in answering the question under which conditions political actors, aiming at the annulment of these fundamental values, could be justifiably excluded from the democratic political process.
Thus, in the second part of the article I will explore an alternative route for justification of ‘militant democracy’. In particular, I will argue that justification of this model stems from the game-like character of democracy. Following Bernard Suits’ analytical exposition of the important features of games, I will first show how democracy is like a game. All games are activities in which two or more independent decision-makers compete with the idea to achieve their objectives in some context which is limited by the rules. The crucial element for a game to be possible is that participants express a specific lusory attitude, which is manifested in their acceptance of the constitutive rules of the game. Democracy possesses all the required features (section IV). In the last step I will provide a general justificatory account of ‘militant democracy’ based on the game-like structure of this form of government. Since the rules of the game are in some sense inseparable from its ends, to break a rule is to render impossible the accomplishment of an end: in the case of democracy, the formation of government. Accordingly, political actors entering the democratic game not with the aforementioned attitude to play it, but to violate its constitutive rules and objectives pertaining to the foundational values of freedom and equality, could simply in virtue of that fact be disqualified to continue the game (section V).
I The controversy of ‘militant democracy’
In his well-known 1937 two-part essay Loewenstein presented a case in favor of ‘militant democracy’ as the most favorable antidote to the threatening toxins of totalitarianism. Even though democratic theory can clearly debunk fascism as a political technique based on crude emotionalism, democracy, as a form of government, is ‘utterly incapable of meeting an emotional attack by an emotional counter-attack’. This is so, because ‘[c]onstitutional government, by its very nature, can appeal only to reason; it never could successfully mobilize emotionalism; even its emotional ingredients are only a prelude to reason’. 3
However, reasons of conceptual distinctiveness and purity were for Loewenstein far less important than practical dictates of everyday life. The rising menace of fascism on the European soil was of such a magnitude that only ‘democratic fundamentalism and legalistic blindness’ could prevent one from realizing ‘that the mechanism of democracy is the Trojan horse by which the enemy enters the city’.
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Loewenstein was, consequently, of the opinion that democracy could not forfeit waging war against its open enemies – If democracy believes in the superiority of its absolute values [emphasis added] over the opportunistic platitudes of fascism, it must live up to the demands of the hour, and every possible effort must be made to rescue it, even at the risk and cost of violating fundamental principles.
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Loewenstein was fully aware of the controversies raised by the concept of ‘militant democracy’, but, for him, preserving this form of government was the ultimate good which justified introduction of unorthodox and openly anti-democratic measures. When democracy is in a ‘state of siege’, 8 as it was in 1930s Europe, what is required is ‘deliberate transformation of obsolete forms and rigid concepts into the new instrumentalities of “disciplined,” or even – let us not shy from the word – “authoritarian,” democracy’. 9
A number of authors have in retrospect reaffirmed Loewenstein’s project, by charging the Weimar era’s model of ‘defenseless democracy’ [wehrlose Demokratie] for enabling the instigation of the Nazi-style totalitarian regime. 10 The disastrous effects of this regime for Germany itself, as well as for the entire world, have prompted postwar constitution drafters of Grundgesetz to adopt some of the instruments of the ‘militant democracy’ model. In this respect, the constitutional ‘eternity clause’ [Ewigkeitsklausel], forbidding the abolishment of democratic order by way of the constitutional supermajority procedure, 11 as well as the early postwar practice of banning anti-democratic parties (proto-Nazi in 1952 and communist in 1956) by the Bundesverfassungsgericht, is often characterized as ‘a response to democratic relativism’ of the Weimar era, 12 as well as a step towards ‘the value bounded democracy’ [die wertgebundene Demokratie]. 13
II Democracy and moral absolutism
Now, the question is how are we to conceive of democracy, as a form of government that is bounded by absolute values? One possible way to do it would be to endorse the line of reasoning of the highest clergy of the Roman Catholic Church, which was thoroughly elaborated in the last decade. While a democratic doctrine was not developed within the Church itself, ‘it has been developed from an outward-looking perspective, which looks not at the Church but rather at the state, the political community’. 14 In a 2004 speech, Pope John Paul II said that the Church appreciated democracy ‘inasmuch as it ensures the participation of citizens in political options and guarantees them the possibility both of electing and controlling their rulers, as well as of replacing them in a peaceful way’. However, what he already then perceived as a threat was the ‘tendency to consider that relativism is the attitude of thought that corresponds better to democratic political forms’, when, instead, ‘truth … is the best antidote to ideological fanaticism, in the scientific, political and also the religious realm’. 15 As a consequence, ‘a democracy without values easily turns into open or thinly disguised totalitarianism, as history demonstrates’. 16
Cardinal Ratzinger followed in the footsteps of his predecessor. In his 2005 homily, addressed to the College of Cardinals in the Vatican Basilica, immediately before his becoming Pope Benedict XVI, he stated: ‘We are building a dictatorship of relativism that does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely of one’s own ego and desires.’ 17 In the papal capacity, he preserved an affirmative stance towards democracy, 18 while continuously targeting the idea that democracy, taken as the majority rule principle, necessarily has to presuppose the rejection of absolute moral values. In his well-known 2011 speech before the German Bundestag, Benedict XVI said: ‘For most of the matters that need to be regulated by law, the support of the majority can serve as a sufficient criterion. Yet it is evident that for the fundamental issues of law, in which the dignity of man and of humanity is at stake, the majority principle is not enough.’ 19
Although not addressing the problem of a specific relation between democracy and moral relativism, Finnis argued already in his 1988 lectures at the Pontifical John Paul II Institute on Marriage and the Family that under particular attack was a small number of strategic moral truths, which were in the foundations of the Christian moral doctrine. The moral truths in question belong to the sub-class of moral absolutes. 20 These norms are absolute not because they are unconditioned, supreme, or fundamental, but because they are, morally speaking, exceptionless. Although exceptions to them ‘are logically possible, and readily conceivable’, they are, nonetheless, ‘morally excluded’. 21 Hence, ‘[a]n exceptionless norm is one which tells us that, whenever we are making a choice, we should never choose to do that sort of thing’. 22
The political project of the contemporary Christian right seems to be grounded in this philosophical position. It proceeds from the idea that democracy would be threatened by an underlying form of moral relativism and this is, in the next step, used ‘as an argument for justifying the need to impose a set of “absolute” limits on the democratic exercise of political power’. 23 Simply put, some political choices need to be excluded from the democratic decision-making procedures on account of their being absolutely morally wrong.
III Democracy and moral relativism
One may reasonably challenge the view that if democracy is not committed to (absolute) moral truths, it will inevitably end up in totalitarianism. In fact, the commitment to a certain set of indisputable moral truths in the realm of politics seems to be one of the dominant features of all the 20th-century totalitarian regimes. They were all built upon some form of ‘political religion’, which can be defined as ‘a complex and multi-faceted phenomenon, a system of beliefs about authority, society and history, providing a comprehensive world vision, a Weltanschauung that claims a truth-value incompatible with other views including the existing religious traditions’. 24
For Kelsen, this relation between philosophical doctrines and forms of government was not purely contingent. To the contrary, he was of the opinion that just as ‘autocracy is political absolutism and political absolutism is paralleled by philosophical absolutism, democracy is political relativism which has its counterpart in philosophical relativism’. 25 Already in 1920, Kelsen published a short treatise on democracy, in which he argued that this form of government is grounded in moral relativism, more particularly, in moral non-cognitivism. 26 Once it is realized that absolute moral values and norms cannot be the object of scientific cognition, 27 it becomes possible to treat all – and most importantly, contrary – political options and opinions as equal. Only under this assumption could all political options be given the equal opportunity to compete for hearts and minds of citizens. Eventually, the will of a majority, and not the absolute moral truth of some political program, becomes the defining principle of the democratic form of government. 28 According to Radbruch, who shared Kelsen’s view, this is so because ‘no political opinion is provable or refutable’ [keine politische Anschauung beweisbar, keine widerlegbar ist] in the scientific sense of the word. 29 This is, ultimately, the ground for distinguishing democracy from all historical forms of absolutist political regimes, including the subsequently installed versions of totalitarianism. 30
Yet, it is exactly this general openness of this form of government towards all political options that carries the seed of democracy’s own self-destruction. Goebbels poignantly formulated this paradox in the often quoted statement: ‘One of the most ridiculous aspects of democracy will always remain … the fact that it has offered to its mortal enemies the means by which to destroy it.’ 31 For a devoted democrat, such as Kelsen, this was democracy’s ‘tragic destiny’ – the fact that ‘it has to breastfeed its fiercest enemies too’. That is, in order ‘to remain true to itself’, democracy needs to ‘tolerate also the movements directed at the destruction of democracy’. Otherwise, ‘a democracy that stands up to the majority will, that tries merely by force to stand up, stops being democracy’ (original emphases). 32 Accordingly, for both Kelsen and pre-war Radbruch, the survival of democracy decisively depends primarily on the strength of the commitment of its supporters, and not on some institutional measures that might violate the moral-philosophical grounds of this form of government. 33
IV Exploring alternatives: Democracy as a game
Loewenstein’s theoretical proposal, defended by a bold language and even oxymoronic phrases, such as ‘authoritarian democracy’, raises a profound philosophical question of whether democracy, after all, could not help but tolerate anti-democratic actors. As rightly pointed out by Fox and Nolte, this seems to be ‘the central paradox’ of this form of government: ‘[T]o suppress anti-democratic movements infringes notions of tolerance at the heart of the democratic ideal, but to allow them endangers the survival of the very system institutionalizing principles of tolerance.’ 34
Does the ‘militant democracy’ model really undermine the ‘true nature’ of the democratic form of government? Or, does democracy indeed rest on certain ‘moral truths’ and ‘absolute values’ which can be legitimately defended?
The preceding analysis demonstrates that, contra initial intuitions, the debate about special connections between meta-ethics and democracy cannot offer us a solid ground for addressing the problem of justification of ‘militant democracy’. As rightly pointed out by Luciani, ‘radical differences among theoretical assumptions will not impede alignment on certain important, practical outcomes that can greatly reduce the distance between the positions’. 35 While Kelsen’s moral non-cognitivism favors the procedural aspect of democracy and the majority rule principle, he was fully aware of the fact that democracy’s historical encounter with liberalism, understood as the constitutional restriction of the governmental power by means of individual rights and liberties, has essentially blurred the borders between the democratic form of government and the liberal content of the constitutional order. And although he persisted in claiming that even ‘liberal democracy is in the first place a specific procedure’, 36 he, nonetheless, conceded to the thesis that there was some necessary liberal content of ‘the usual concept of democracy’, which included constitutional guarantees of ‘freedom of conscience, of speech, the press and, especially, freedom of association’. 37 For this particular reason, the Bolsheviks’ version of a ‘true democracy’, in which the Communist Party’s unlimited rule is disguised as ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’, could never qualify for the status of democracy. 38 On the other hand, moral absolutism, of the Roman Catholic Church style, puts emphasis on certain values which are regarded as absolute moral truths, and which, as such, place outward limitations on the majority rule. Nonetheless, ‘[t]he majority principle is not rejected in toto as an instrument of rational public decision-making, but it is proclaimed inadequate “for the fundamental issues of law”’. In the Roman Catholic Church’s doctrine, the majority rule has to surrender to two fundamental moral values: freedom of conscience and the right of active resistance. 39 In conclusion, while the Roman Catholic Church’s stance that ‘not only can democracy coexist with ethical absolutism, but it must propose it as the necessary prerequisite for itself to be a real possibility’ 40 flies in the face of the historical evidence of totalitarian regimes built around some such political theology, Kelsen’s approach leaves unanswered the question of moral status of values which enjoy constitutional protection from the will of an overbearing majority. 41 Therefore, we are forced to leave the terrain of meta-ethics and to search for some alternative paths to the problem of justification of ‘militant democracy’.
In what follows, I propose to take an unexplored justificatory route, which is built upon the idea to treat democracy as a game with a complex set of goals, rules, means and actors (both institutional and non-institutional). This analogy will pass the test of viability if it can be proven that: (1) regardless of their primary purpose, all games share some important features; and (2) democracy, as a form of government, can be said to possess those features.
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As for the first claim, game theorists, contra Wittgenstein,
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readily acknowledge the existence of such common features of all the gaming activities. Clark Abt, for instance, came up with the following definition: ‘A game is an activity among two or more independent decision-makers seeking to achieve their objectives in some limiting context’(original emphases).
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A somewhat more comprehensive and elaborate definition, which will be used for the purposes of this article, was provided by a philosopher of games, Bernard Suits. In a seminal paper, published in 1967, he came to the conclusion that … to play a game is to engage in activity directed toward bringing about a specific state of affairs, using only means permitted by specific rules, where the means permitted by the rules are more limited in scope than they would be in the absence of the rules, and where the sole reason for accepting such limitation is to make possible such activity.
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Finally, it is important to bear in mind that winning as such cannot be taken as the ultimate end of the game. One has to differentiate between the three interrelated, yet distinctive, ends. The first of them ‘consists in a certain state of affairs’ – in chess, this is a juxtaposition of particular pieces on the board; in a race, this is crossing a finishing line; etc. Nevertheless, this state of affairs, in principle, could be achieved with an unlimited number of means (e.g. in a race, by starting the race whenever one wants, by using whichever track one wants, etc.). Therefore, the second end – the specific end of winning the game – comes only with the stipulation of constitutive rules that restrict the means for the achievement of the first end. Simply put, these constitutive rules determine what it means to win the game. The last distinctive end consists in the very activity of trying to win, that is, in playing the game. Suits makes a final caveat – ‘in some cases it is possible to pursue one of these ends without pursuing the others’, while ‘in some cases it is not’. 50
In a further refinement of his position, developed in a 1978 book The Grasshopper, Suits introduces the additional element of the so-called lusory attitude (from the Latin ludus, game). This specific attitude ‘is the element which unifies the other elements into a single formula which successfully states the necessary and sufficient conditions for any activity to be an instance of game playing’. 51 Why would anyone accept rules which require that he or she employs less rather than more favorable means for accomplishing an end? Suits responds by claiming that, unlike in other life-activities where this would be a ‘decidedly irrational thing to do’, in games this is ‘an absolutely essential thing to do’. 52 Consequently, lusory attitude can be defined as ‘the acceptance of constitutive rules just so the activity made possible by such acceptance can occur’. 53
After demonstrating that it is possible to determine some common features of all the games, I now turn to the investigation whether democracy can be also said to possess the game-like structure. It transpires that the idea of ‘democracy as a game’ – or, at least, the use of this particular phrase – is already employed in the political philosophy. 54 More specifically, in the literature on democratic transition and consolidation, it was used by Linz and Stepan, who defined ‘consolidated democracy’ as the political situation in which, behaviorally, attitudinally and constitutionally speaking, democracy has become ‘the only game in town’. 55 Surely the use of a particular phrase does not prove anything. It is still necessary to explore whether the aforementioned structural features of game are present in the case of democracy. The aim of any actor seriously involved in politics is to somehow assume and exercise power. This is the common objective of all the political regimes (end 1). Although other governmental forms also introduce some rudimentary rules, which restrict the available legitimate means for assuming power (e.g. succession in hereditary monarchies) and/or exercising it (e.g. specialization of tasks along the lines of the division between three branches of government), democracy is not only the most comprehensively rule-bounded form of government, but also the one that normally stipulates mechanisms and instruments for denying rights and punishing those in violation of the stipulated conditions and rules. At least, this is the apparent feature of modern, representative constitutional democracies. For instance, the right to take part in elections will be denied if the electoral list is not registered within the stipulated term; or, a political party which raised funds in an electoral campaign contrary to the stipulated rules will be subject to a fine; etc. Hence, in this form of government, the majority principle only abstractly defines what counts as a legitimate government and what as a binding political decision, but more specific constitutional and electoral rules, rules of the parliamentary procedure, as well as rules regulating political life in general (like the rules on financing political parties), define the ‘limiting context’ within which it is determined what it means to ‘win’, that is, to democratically form the government and exercise power (end 2). Finally, unlike in various forms of autocratic regimes, where a person can be enthroned or installed in power without necessarily pursuing this goal, in democracy this is not possible. In parliamentary democracy, in particular, it is impossible to ‘win’ without participating in elections (end 3).
V The game-like character of democracy and a justification of ‘militant democracy’
The undertaken analysis suggests that democracy possesses, more than any other form of government, all the earlier elucidated features of ‘game’. In the last step, I will argue that this game-like character of democracy is in itself sufficient to justify the introduction of measures of ‘militant democracy’. I am concerned here with the most controversial of all the measures of this model – the outlawing of a political party. 56 One might reasonably argue that this step decisively depends on one’s understanding of democracy and, consequently, of ‘enemies’ of democracy. Yet, Issacharoff is right in noticing that, ‘[w]hen stripped down to their essentials, all definitions of democracy rest ultimately on the primacy of electoral choice and the presumptive claim of the majority to rule’. This ‘thin’ understanding of democracy does not suffice. It has nowadays to be broadened with ‘a background set of rules, institutions, and definitions of eligible citizenship that serve as preconditions to the exercise of any meaningful popular choice’. Finally, ‘all democracies of the modern era have constitutional constraints that cabin, through substantive limits and procedural hurdles, what the majority may do at any given point’. 57
To be sure, the claim that some issues have to be taken off the democratic decision-making agenda and protected by the constitution and, sometimes, by the mechanism of judicial review, is the subject matter of a harsh theoretical dispute. 58 Nevertheless, even Kelsen was aware that ‘the usual concept of democracy’ was one that was historically complemented with ‘an essential element’ of various constitutionally protected individual rights and freedoms. 59 If we proceed from such ‘usual’ concept of the contemporary constitutional democracy, it becomes clearer who might be labeled as an ‘enemy’ of democracy. This would be a political actor who tries to destroy the ‘democratic game’ by abolishing its constitutive rules, which stem from the fundamental values of freedom and equality and which define both the objective of the game and the ‘limiting context’ within which it is played. In one of its decisions on this subject, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) spelled out ‘that only very serious breaches such as those which endanger political pluralism or fundamental democratic principles could justify a ban on the activities of a political party’. 60 More particularly, an ‘enemy of democracy’ would be an actor who: more or less frequently uses intimidation and even open violence against its political opponents; 61 more or less openly agitates for institutional changes that in some important respects are incompatible with democratic order; 62 strives towards the abolishment of the multi-party system; misuses given political freedoms for denying fundamental equality and freedom of all human beings; etc.
The last-mentioned violation is probably the most controversial one, having in mind the fact that various aspects of individual freedom are considered constitutive for the very democratic game. This particularly holds for the freedom of expression. Hence, if this freedom is one of the fundamental rules of the game, under what conditions, if any, could the political actor be denied participation for expressing certain political ideas? For instance, could Golden Dawn be expelled from the democratic game solely on account of agitating for white supremacy and ‘[s]egregation of Greek and foreign students in primary and secondary education’? 63 At this point, it is impossible to disregard profound differences between the European and American readings of the admissible substantive limitations to the freedom of expression. These are largely driven by distinctive historical experiences and existing socio-cultural contexts. 64 Hence, in the midst of the Muhammad cartoon controversy, Dworkin famously propounded ‘the right to ridicule’, arguing that ‘in a democracy no one, however powerful or impotent, can have a right not to be insulted or offended’. Moreover, Dworkin advised those who were ready to defend the restriction of the freedom of expression by pointing to the practice of the European Court of Human Rights that democratic legitimacy required the reversed course of action – working ‘toward a new understanding of the European Convention of Human Rights that would strike down the Holocaust-denial law and similar laws across Europe for what they are: violations of the freedom of speech that that convention demands’. 65
Therefore, even though there is a widespread consensus about what are the constitutive rules and objectives of the democratic game, there is a variety of interpretations and institutional implementations of them. 66 However, these are not of such a nature as to raise the question whether the game played, say, in France is the same one as that played in Australia. 67 Moreover, this is not the exceptional feature of the democratic game. Any version of the poker game, for instance, has its local variations, with more or less restrictive interpretation of the constitutive rules. Similarly, English football referees are ostensibly much more tolerant towards tough game than those in the rest of Europe, etc. However, once the internal conventional standards of the interpretation of constitutive rules are set up, 68 the exclusion of a violating actor from the democratic game would be on par with the exclusion of a poker player caught with marked cards; or with the red card given to a football player as a penalty for a brutal attack on a rival; or with the disqualification of the contestant who started the race before the signal from the starter’s pistol; etc.
Simply put, ‘enemies of democracy’ are those political actors that in some important respects lack the prerequisite lusory attitude which makes the democratic game possible. Democracy, as any other game, is built upon ‘the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles’. 69 As previously mentioned, the end 1 in politics concerns resuming and exercising power and it is by no means necessary to achieve this goal by observing the majority rule principle and by respecting freedom and equality of all the political actors. This goal could be fairly well achieved through coup d’état, revolution, or foreign military intervention. Hence, all those actors which are not practically committed to overcoming unnecessary obstacles posed by constitutive rules of the democratic game do not actually belong to the game and could be solely on this ground disqualified, in the same way as could happen with a cheating poker player, an intolerably aggressive footballer, or a recklessly unhesitating racer. In the preceding analysis I referred to typical external manifestations of the lack of lusory attitude to play the democratic game. This is the most that a general justificatory model can offer. It rests upon relevant authorities to decide whether it would be prudent at all to try to exclude some political actors from the democratic game, 70 and if they try to do so, it rests upon competent adjudicative bodies to determine whether in the given set of circumstances certain political activities could be legally qualified as inimical to democracy. 71 ECtHR, for instance, developed in its practice a general line of reasoning, according to which ‘only serious breaches of what may be labelled as a code of conduct in a democratic society may serve as a pretext for a ban on a political party. The threshold of seriousness was achieved in the court’s view when a party produced an “imminent danger” for democracy in a given country.’ 72
Conclusion
What the aforementioned analysis demonstrates is that, more than any other form of government, democracy could be said to possess the game-like character, insofar as it stipulates a number of constitutive rules which restrict the scope of legitimate means for accomplishing the ultimate end of resuming and exercising political power. Throughout its history democracy has changed a lot. No wonder, thus, that political theory normally differentiates between ancient and modern, direct and representative, or constitutional and electoral democracy. Having in mind some fundamental changes of this form of government, such as the universalization of suffrage, the rise of political parties, or the emergence of organized electoral campaigns, one might be inclined to conclude that the constitutive rules of the democratic game were changing as arbitrarily as in some far less serious games. 73 However, this would be a hasty conclusion. Despite significant changes, democracy has always been a game whose constitutive rules were modeled after the prevailing understanding of the fundamental values of freedom and equality. At first glance, it appears as if the meta-ethical debate concerning the status of those moral values can offer us a firm ground for the problem of justification of ‘militant democracy’. It transpires that this is not the case. For this reason, I presented an alternative argument that democracy could justifiably exclude its ‘enemies’ simply in virtue of having a game-like structure. No game is designed so as to allow its participants to fundamentally challenge the very objectives, rules and means of the game. Quite the contrary, the existence of game decisively depends upon the lusory attitude of its contestants. There is no reason to believe that the democratic game is an exception. Nonetheless, it should be borne in mind that although ‘militant democracy’ model can be principally justified, it alone can certainly not prevent the worst case scenario once the majority of the population tacitly or manifestly expresses its willingness no longer to play by the rules of the democratic game. 74