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Militant democracy: A friend or enemy of democratic backsliding?

  • Violeta Beširević
  • Union University Law School Belgrade
  • Democracy Institute, Central European University

Research output: Contribution to Book/Report typesChapterpeer-review

Abstract (may include machine translation)

The basic purpose of this chapter is to identify a clear understanding of militant democracy and to assess whether, adequately understood, militant democracy can help in fighting democratic backsliding. First, Tom Ginsburg’s and Aziz Huq’s understanding of militant democracy and their scepticism towards its potential to confront democratic backlisting will be used as a foil for developing a clearer concept of militant democracy and for identifying misplaced criticisms. It will be shown that scepticism towards militant democracy springs from the wrong association of militant democracy with other concepts that do not treat individual liberty as an absolute value and that, therefore, militant democracy is too quickly eliminated from the toolkit for preventing democratic backsliding. Second, after making the necessary distinctions, an argument as to why militant democracy could help impede democracy erosion will be sketched.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationResearch Handbook on the Politics of Constitutional Law
EditorsMark Tushnet, Dimitry Kochenov
PublisherEdward Elgar Publishing Ltd.
Pages658-673
Number of pages16
ISBN (Electronic)9781839101649
ISBN (Print)9781839101632
DOIs
StatePublished - 2023
Externally publishedYes

Publication series

NameResearch Handbooks in Law and Politics

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