Introduction
Since it was brought to life in connection with the developments in the Weimar Republic more than 80 years ago (Loewenstein 1937), militant democracy has been a central concept for examination of the measures democracies take to ensure their own survival. It can be defined as a “strong constitutional order” where legal restrictions on rights and freedoms of those who engage in actions aimed at undermining democracy apply (Kaltwasser and Taggart 2016, pp. 208–209). Logically, then, such an order would need to entail an “explicit definition of the fundamental values of democracy” (Rummens and Abts 2010, p. 650). In practice, fundamental democratic values may not be defined in constitutional orders, and due to the plethora of actors involved in (re)defining the meaning of democracy in a given time and space, as well as the overall complexity of that endeavor, a wide zone of discretion for the interpretation of restrictions in concrete cases remains.
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Further Reading
Ellian, A., & Rijpkema, B. (Eds.). (2018). Militant democracy – political science, law and philosophy. Cham: Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97004-2.
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Rijpkema, B. (2018). Militant democracy: The limits of democratic tolerance. London: Routledge.
Steuer, M. (2019). Militant Democracy on the Rise: Consequences of Legal Restrictions on Extreme Speech in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary. Review of Central and East European Law 44(2), 162–201. https://doi.org/10.1163/15730352-04402003.
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Steuer, M. (2019). Militant Democracy. In: Romaniuk, S., Thapa, M., Marton, P. (eds) The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Global Security Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74336-3_605-1
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