"How can we defend our democracies against those who would destroy them? We talk a lot about strategies for keeping anti-liberal, nationalist populists out of power, but Donald Trump's daily wielding of a wrecking ball shows that it's equally important to reinforce your democracy so it can withstand a period of populists in power. Germany has a concept called wehrhafte Demokratie, often weirdly translated as militant democracy but actually meaning a democracy capable of defending itself."
"Under this motto, some in Germany are proposing to ban Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD), now one of the most popular parties in the country. That's the wrong way to go. It would only reinforce the far-right party's supporters in their conviction that the democratic state itself is a kind of liberal elitist conspiracy, and impart to the AfD the nimbus of martyrdom."
"But if you're going to take the risk of letting populists into government, you need first to reinforce the defences of your democracy otherwise they will use democracy to dismantle democracy, as Viktor Orban has done in Hungary and Trump is trying to do in the US. Salami slice by salami slice, these once liberal democracies become what political scientists call an electoral authoritarian system."
Democratic systems require strengthened institutional and legal safeguards to survive periods when anti-liberal populists gain power. Outright bans on popular far-right parties risk energising supporters and conferring martyr status, while broad exclusionary pacts among mainstream parties can undermine reform and permit sidelined populists to criticise freely. Allowing populists into government can expose their failures and produce electoral correction, but only if democratic checks are robust. Without reinforced defences, populists can erode institutions incrementally, turning liberal democracies into electoral authoritarian systems where elections persist but democratic substance decays.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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