Responses to Political Radicalism in European Liberal Democracies: Instruments, Actors and Effectiveness

Abstract

The existence of various radical (anti-system, extremist, populist) challenges to the liberal democratic state is not new. The recent wave of popularity and successes of political parties, personalities and political movements questioning the status quo and pitting the people against elites poses a challenge to the fundamental values and institutions of liberal democracy as well as the international postwar order that helped sustain them. Thus, the panel addresses possible responses to political radicalism by state authorities, international organizations and civil society. The list of tools ostensibly used for ’democratic defence’ is long. It includes various repressive and inclusive, legal and political instruments like laws against hate-speech, party and association bans; practices of ostracism and cordon sanitaire; policy co-optation and cooperation in government, programs of civic education. The panel examines adopted solutions, their determinants, as well as their effects on anti-system challengers, other political and state actors and democratic system, among other things. It seeks to understand how liberal democratic states respond to extremism and populism and why they respond differently to purportedly similar political challenges. The aim of the panel is also to examine the contemporary relevance of the conceptual framework of ‘militant’ democracy” and address the normative implications and democratic dilemmas entailed by measures delimiting the undesired political projects and actions.