Proscribing Democracy? Party Proscription, Militant Democracy and Party System Institutionalisation

In recent decades regulations of the internal organisational structure and activities of political parties has increased considerably. However, it is only recently that scholars have begun examining empirical and normative dimensions of party regulation systematically (e.g. Biezen and Casal Bértoa, 2014; Biezen & ten Napel 2014; Casal Bértoa and Biezen, forthcoming; Casal Bértoa and Spirova 2013). More generally, however, as Biezen and Casal Bértoa (2014) have observed, that the effects of party law on democratic development have been neglected. This is problematic because party regulation affects the institutional context within which parties operate and has implications for parties’ role in democratic politics (Bourne, 2012, 2013). Constitutions and party laws may require parties to fulfill certain formal conditions (e.g. frequency of party congresses, compulsory majorities, creation of internal jurisdictional/arbitration bodies, etc.) and respect democratic principles and the constitutional order. Failure to meet such requirements may lead to punishment or dissolution, which may have consequences for party system stability (Casal Bértoa et al. 2014, Müller, 1993; Smith 1986) or the survival of democracy as a whole (Capoccia, 2005). Addressing these issues, we look at relationships between types of legal constitutional order adopted in European states and on their respective party systems. The paper’s first part uses Bourne’s (2012) typology of “activist-intolerant” and “abstentionist-intolerant democracies” to categorise the party ban regimes of 28 EU member states. It second part examines more closely the effects this type of regulation has had on party system institutionalization in general, and in Germany, Turkey and Spain in particular. We expect the banning of a more or less relevant party to produce important changes in the party system, either at the electoral (increasing volatility and/or reducing fragmentation) and/or legislative-governmental (changing the structure of competition) level.