Questioning Militant Democracy

The workshop will critically examine legal and political practices that seek to exclude political parties or candidates from elections or governing, because they are deemed to be a threat to democracy. Such practices include the legal prohibition of parties or candidates, their exclusion from public funding that other parties have access to, their stigmatisation and observation by constitutional protection agencies as a "suspect case", as well as their exclusion from political bargaining and cooperation in name of establishing and securing "firewalls" between them and ordinary democratic parties.

Which of these practices are appropriate in a liberal constitutional democracy and, to the extent they are, under what - substantive and procedural - conditions exactly? And even if justified in principle, what are the conditions under which such measures are likely to be effective? Drawing on concrete recent cases, including from Poland, Romania, the United States, Brazil, France and Germany, the participants will address both issues of principle and of practical effects.

Structure:

1 pm - 2:45 pm: Basic conceptual and legal/moral issues

Mattias Kumm (WZB/NYU)

Wolfgang Merkel (WZB)

Kim Lane Scheppele (Princeton University, USA)

Daniel Ziblatt (WZB/Harvard University, USA)

3 pm - 4:30 pm: Varieties of militant democracy

David Dyzenhaus (University of Toronto, Canada)

Anna-Bettina Kaiser (HU Berlin)

Jan-Werner Mueller (Princeton University, USA)

Petra Schleiter (University of Oxford, UK)

5 pm - 6:30 pm: Applications and hard cases

Karol Dobrzeniecki (Copernicus University, Poland)

Marcin Kilanowski (Copernicus University, Poland)

Kriszta Kovács (WZB)

Silvia von Steinsdorff (HU Berlin)

Other active participants include Temi Ogunye (Princeton),  Dieter Gosewinkel (WZB).

Please register by June 24, 2025 to hilde.ottschofski [at] wzb.eu.

Please note that seating is limited.