488 A

Militant Democracy, Populism, Illiberalism

From Militant Democracy to Normal Politics? How

European Democracies Respond to Populist Parties

Angela K. Bourne*

Problems with militant democracy and democratic defence approaches – a new

typology of initiatives opposing populist parties: democratic defence as ‘normal
politics’ – populist opponents: public authorities, parties and civil society – toler-
ant and intolerant modes of engagement with populists – intolerant initiatives
opposing populist parties – rights restrictions by public authorities – ostracism
by political parties – coercive confrontation by civil society actors – tolerant ini-
tiatives opposing populist parties – ‘ordinary’ legal controls and pedagogy by pub-
lic authorities – forbearance by political parties – adversarialism by civil society
actors

I
Over the last decade or so, populist parties have become increasingly successful,
both in Europe and beyond. While there is disagreement in scholarly and public
debates, most agree that populist parties invoke a vision of society as deeply
divided between two groups: the virtuous, ordinary, or common ‘people’; and
a self-interested or corrupt ‘elite’.1 The rise of populist parties is novel in several

*Professor (with Special Responsibilities), Roskilde University, Department of Social Science

and Business, Denmark. The research was funded by the Carlsberg Foundation ‘Challenges for
Europe Programme’ project on Populism and Democratic Defence In Europe (CF20-008). I would
like to thank my colleagues Aleksandra Moroska-Bonkiewicz, Bénédicte Laumond, Francesco
Campo, Mathias Holst Nicolaisen, Franciszek Tyszka, Tore Vincents Olsen, Juha Tuovinen,
Anthoula Malkopoulou and Katarzyna Domagała for many insights when developing the typology,
and participants in the May 2021 ECPR joint sessions workshop on Militant Democracy:
New Challengers and Challenges.
1
E. Laclau, On Populist Reason (Verso 2005); C. Mudde, ‘The Populist Zeitgeist’, 39
Government and Opposition (2004); K. Weyland, ‘Populism: A Political-strategic Approach’, in

European Constitutional Law Review, 18: 488–510, 2022

© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the University of
Amsterdam doi:10.1017/S1574019622000268

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 From Militant Democracy to Normal Politics? 489

respects. Their increasing success has profoundly altered the structure of political
competition in many European countries. Populists win many votes, have
become major parties of opposition, and often participate in government, some-
times as junior coalition partners, other times playing leading roles. These increas-
ingly powerful parties operate in a globalised, interdependent Europe, which
provides both opportunities and constraints. It is difficult to draw straightforward
analogies with the interwar rise of fascism and post-war communist takeover in
Eastern Europe though. While fascist and Marxist-Leninist revolutionaries
pitched themselves clearly in opposition to liberal democracy, the democratic ori-
entation of populism is much more ambiguous. Populist would-be-autocrats
often legitimate rule with appeals to popular sovereignty in regular if not always
‘fair’ electoral contests. In some cases, populist anti-elitist appeals may help unseat
governing cliques that are in fact unresponsive or corrupt. This uncertainty is
reflected in the academic literature, where some see populism as a path to ‘true’
democracy, while for others it as a road to dictatorship, or some kind of hybrid,
illiberal democracy.2
Despite this ambiguity, opposition to populist parties is often pitched in the
language of democratic defence. Yet, as I spell out below, populist success with
voting publics, their claims to put ordinary people first, and their entry into gov-
ernment shake confidence in the utility of the scholarly paradigms of ‘militant
democracy’ or ‘democratic defence’, which have long shaped public policy and
scholarship on how liberal democrats ought to respond to challengers. These tra-
ditional approaches are shaped by interwar experience of the Nazi’s rise to power,
and the rise of right-wing populist parties in Europe from the 1980s. They have
tended to contemplate responses to relatively minor parties of opposition or those
with relatively clear anti-democratic or illiberal ideologies. These shortcomings
require the development of a new conceptual language to better understand
the nature, political effects, and normative implications of opposition to contem-
porary populist parties. As a first step in this endeavour, I present a new typology
to classify what we already know about opposition to contemporary populist par-
ties and to facilitate further empirical and comparative studies of that opposition.
This typology facilitates broader reflections on the normative implications of con-
temporary modes of opposition with populist parties, and a conceptual rubric for

P. Taggart et al. (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Populism (Oxford University Press 2017); B. Moffit, The
Global Rise of Populism: Performance, Political Style and Representation (Stanford University Press
2016).
2
C. Mudde and C. Rovira Kaltwasser (eds.), Populism in Europe and the Americas: Threat or
Corrective for Democracy? (Cambridge University Press 2012); J.W. Müller, What Is Populism?
(University of Pennsylvania Press 2016); C. Mouffe, For a Left Populism (La Vergne 2018);
Y. Stavrakakis, ‘The Return of “the People”: Populism and Anti-Populism in the Shadow of the
European Crisis’, 21 Constellations (2014).

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 490 Angela K. Bourne EuConst 18 (2022)

understanding variation and developing new theories to evaluate the effectiveness

(or otherwise) of initiatives opposing populist parties.
The article begins examining the extent to which existing classificatory schemes
and typologies are ‘fit for purpose’. I then outline a typology for classifying what I
call Initiatives opposing Populist Parties (henceforth IoPPs). First, it classifies
IoPPs according to the type of political actor that initiates opposition against pop-
ulists (public authorities, political parties, or civil society actors). The second clas-
sificatory criterion is more complex, focusing on whether the modes of engagement
employed are ‘tolerant’ or ‘intolerant’. While my typology draws on previous work
on militant democracy and democratic defence, it departs from them by allowing
classification of a much larger range of initiatives, by a wider range of opposing
actors, operating at and across local, national, and international territorial levels of
governance. Acknowledging that populist parties are often more powerful politi-
cally than typical challengers from previous decades, and the normative challenges
of navigating much muddier waters when evaluating the threat of populist parties
to liberal democratic institutions, the typology is much more sensitive to what I
call ‘normal politics’ initiatives. In contrast to the intolerant, exceptional measures
typically of interest to the paradigm of militant democracy, such as party bans,
normal politics initiatives are typically tolerant forms of engagement with populist
parties similar to those used in relation to other kinds of political opponent.

P      


Over the last few decades, scholars have developed several conceptual frameworks
to classify responses to anti-system parties and movements.3 To my knowledge,

3
G. Fox and G. Nolte, ‘Intolerant Democracies’, in G. Fox and B. Roth (eds.), Democratic
Governance and International Law (Cambridge University Press 2000); P. Niesen, ‘Anti-extremism,
Negative Republicanism, Civil Society: Three Paradigms for Banning Political Parties’, 3(7) German
Law Journal (2002) E1; A. Bourne, ‘Democratisation and the Proscription of Political Parties’, 19(6)
Democratization (2012) p. 1065; A. Pedahzur, ‘The Defending Democracy and the Extreme Right:
A Comparative Analysis’, in R. Eatwell and C. Mudde (eds.), Western Democracies and the New
Extreme Right Challenge (Routledge 2004); G. Capoccia, Defending Democracy: Reactions to
Extremism in Interwar Europe (John Hopkins University Press 2005); W. Downs, Political
Extremism in Democracies: Combatting Intolerance (Palgrave Macmillan 2012); S. Rummens and
K. Abts, ‘Defending Democracy: The Concentric Containment of Political Extremism’, 58(10)
Political Studies (2010) p. 649; A. Malkopoulou and L. Norman, ‘Three Models of Democratic
Self-Defence: Militant Democracy and Its Alternatives’, 66(2) Political Studies (2018) p. 442;
D. Albertazzi et al., ‘The Strategies of Party Competition: A Typology’, in D. Albertazzi and
D. Vampa (eds.), Populism and New Patterns of Political Competition in Western Europe
(Routledge 2021) p. 50.

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 From Militant Democracy to Normal Politics? 491

there has been no attempt to develop a comprehensive classification of responses

to populist parties per se.4
Efforts to classify opposition to anti-system actors have been strongly influ-
enced by the concept of ‘militant democracy’, whose origins are traced to Karl
Loewenstein’s appeal for robust responses to fascism in 1930s Europe.5
Militant democracy is often defined as legally-authorised, but exceptional, restric-
tions of certain basic political rights – particularly those of association and expres-
sion – to pre-emptively marginalise those who are otherwise acting within the law
and prevent them from undermining liberal democracy.6 During the Cold War,
the principal targets of militant democracy were fascist and orthodox communist
parties that participated in electoral politics despite a ‘declared : : : intention to
replace democracy with something supposedly better’.7 Typical measures of mili-
tant democracy were party and association bans and restrictions of free speech.
Müller argues that militant democracy is relevant for opposing populists. Short
of a ‘clear and present danger’, he argues, we can recognise ‘attacks on core dem-
ocratic principles’ when proponents of ‘extremist views’: (1) ‘seek permanently to
exclude or disempower parts of the democratic people’; (2) ‘systematically assault
the dignity of parts of the democratic people’; and (3) ‘clearly clothe themselves in
the mantle of former perpetrators of ethnic cleansing or genocide’.8 A further type
occurs when ‘the proponents of extremist views’ behave in ways ‘often associated
with the concept of populism’.9 That is, when (4) ‘proponents of extremist views
: : : seek to speak in the name of the people as a whole, systematically denying the
fractures and divisions of society (in particular those associated with the contest of
political parties) and systematically seek to do away with the checks and balances
which have come to be associated with all European democracies created after
1945’.10 Applying normative theories of militant democracy and the practices

4
Taggart and Rovira only address responses to populist parties in government: C. Rovira
Kaltwasser and P. Taggart, ‘Dealing with Populists Parties in Government: A Framework for
Analysis’ 23(2) Democratization (2016) p. 1.
5
K. Loewenstein, ‘Militant Democracy and Fundamental Rights II’, 31(4) The American
Political Science Journal (1937) p. 638.
6
J.W. Müller, ‘Militant Democracy’, in M. Rosenfeld and A. Sajó (eds.), The Oxford Handboook
of Comparative Constitutional Law (Oxford University Press 2012) p. 1253; C. Invernizzi and I.
Zuckerman, ‘What’s Wrong with Militant Democracy?’, 65 Political Studies (2015) p. 183;
S. Tyulkina, Militant Democracy: Undemocratic Political Parties and Beyond (Routledge 2015)
p. 14; A. Malkopoulou, ‘Introduction. Militant Democracy’, in A. Malkopoulou and
A. Kirshner (eds.), Militant Democracy and Its Critics (Edinburgh University Press 2019).
7
J.W. Müller, ‘Protecting Popular Self-Government from the People? New Normative
Perspectives on Militant Democracy’, 19 Annual Review of Political Science (2016) p. 250.
8
Müller, supra n. 6, p. 1267-68.
9
Ibid.
10
Ibid.

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 492 Angela K. Bourne EuConst 18 (2022)

they justify to populist parties is far from straightforward, however. As mentioned

above, it is a matter of considerable debate whether populism is a ‘threat’ or a
‘corrective’ to liberal democracy and many disagree with Müller’s characterisation
of populism as a form of extremism. Against the ‘populism-as-extremism’ posi-
tion, others argue that populism can in some cases be a form of radical democ-
racy,11 or at best a form of hybrid illiberal democracy.12 In addition, as Rovira
Kaltwasser argues, an important problem is that militant democracy ‘implicitly
assumes that there is wide consensus among both the population and the elite on
what democracy means and who constitutes the demos’, while the prevalence of
populism reveals distinctive ‘understandings of both democracy and the boundaries
of the demos’.13 This is one reason why rights-restricting initiatives typical of militant
democracy are rarely used against populist parties in contemporary Europe.
Another set of classificatory schemes focuses on a much broader range of
responses. These can be loosely grouped together into a ‘defending democracy’
approach and are dominated by, but not exclusive to, political scientists.14
Capoccia’s widely cited typology distinguishes between initiatives pursuing
shorter- and longer-term goals, and between ‘exclusive-repressive’ and ‘inclu-
sive-educational’ initiatives. Down’s typology, which principally focuses on
party-political strategies, distinguishes between, on the one hand, a strategy of
disengagement and engagement with parties deemed liberal democratic chal-
lengers, and more-or-less tolerant responses on the other. Similarly, Meguid
and Albertazzi et al. classify party-political responses into dismissive, adversarial,
and accommodative strategies of partisan competitors. Fox and Nolte build on
theoretical distinctions between ‘procedural’ and ‘substantive’ models of democ-
racy. Procedural models conceive democracy as an institutional arrangement for
choosing leaders, with majority rule as the basis for legitimacy. Tolerance is a tran-
scendent norm and there are no guarantees that democracy will always prevail. In
the substantive model, democracy is conceived as a means for creating a society
where citizens enjoy core rights and liberties; the model asserts that rights should

Mouffe, supra n. 2; Y. Stavrakakis, ‘Paradoxes of Polarization: Democracy’s Inherent Division

11

and the (Anti-) Populist Challenge’, 62(1) American Behavioral Scientist (2018).
12
Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser, supra n. 2; T.S. Pappas, Populism and Liberal Democracy: A
Comparative and Theoretical Analysis (Oxford University Press 2019).
13
C. Rovira Kaltwasser, ‘Militant Democracy Versus Populism’, in Malkopoulou and Kirshner,
supra n. 6, p. 73.
14
G. Capoccia, ‘Defending Democracy: Strategies of Reaction to Political Extremism in Inter-
war Europe’, 39 European Journal of Political Research (2001); Capoccia, supra n. 3; Pedahzur, supra
n. 3; Rummens and Abts, supra n. 3; Malkopoulou and Norman, supra n. 3; B.M. Meguid,
‘Competition Between Unequals: The Role of Mainstream Party Strategy in Niche Party
Success’, 99 American Political Science Review (2005) p. 347; Albertazzi et al., supra n. 3; Fox
and Nolte, supra n. 3.

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 From Militant Democracy to Normal Politics? 493

not be used to abolish other rights. Similarly, Rummens and Abts’s ‘concentric
containment’ model of democracy distinguishes between initiatives associated
with substantive/militant and procedural conceptions of democracy on the one
hand, and whether an anti-system party is politically significant enough to enter
formal political institutions on the other. Malkopoulou and Norman introduce a
‘social democratic’ model of democratic defence, which they argue is superior on
normative grounds to ‘militant democracy’ and a ‘liberal-procedural’ model.
These typologies differ in terms of the range of initiatives they encompass and
the types of initiating political actors addressed. For example, Downs, Meguid
and Albertazzi et al.’s typologies focus on the actions of political parties.
Others, such as Capoccia and Pedahzur’s, classify a broader range of initiatives
ranging from party bans, criminal law, lustration measures, collaboration with
challenger parties in government and long-term strategies of civic education.
Most typologies prioritise state-based initiatives and the strategies of political par-
ties, although both Pedahzur and Rummens and Abts pay some attention to civil
society response to anti-system parties.
Despite their many insights, these democratic defence approaches have short-
comings limiting their usefulness for studying contemporary responses to popu-
lism. Like militant democracy, most assume that the initiatives they study oppose
‘extremists’ posing a readily identifiable threat to liberal democracy. Furthermore,
in these approaches opponents are predominantly opposition parties, which is at
odds with the fact that so many populist parties in Europe routinely enter – and
sometimes dominate – government. It is hard to see where international opposition
to populist parties, such as Court of Justice of the EU rule of law judgments against
Poland, or the EU’s new rule of law conditionality budget sanctions targeting
Hungary, fit into any of these classificatory schemes.15 In addition, classifications
developed by political theorists are often difficult to operationalise, particularly those
based on distinctions between procedural and substantive democracies.
In sum, new thinking is required to understand responses to populist parties
beyond the conventional repertoire of exclusionary, repressive militant democracy,
and the broader, but largely state- and party-based repertoire of democratic defence
approaches. The typology outlined in the next section provides a way forward.

A       :

   ‘ ’
A core assumption underpinning the typology is that populist success means that
populist politics is probably here to stay, at least for the medium term. Their
15
For a partial exception see Rovira Kaltwasser and Taggart, supra n. 4.

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 494 Angela K. Bourne EuConst 18 (2022)

popularity with voters and governing status in many European countries means
many populist parties cannot simply be banned, kept in ‘quarantine’, or ignored.
Those who disagree with populist parties will often need to deploy the kinds of
initiatives routinely used against other politically successful opponents, such as
parties of the centre-left and right. This can include deploying constitutional
checks and balances constraining the power of governing parties, national and
international legal constraints to block individual anti-democratic or illiberal
reforms, or civil society actions organising strikes or protest in the streets.
Repressive or exclusionary initiatives typically linked to the traditional paradigms
of militant democracy and democratic defence are not entirely absent, as continu-
ing efforts to ostracise National Rally in France or Alternative for Germany attest,
or may take new forms, as the EU’s Article 7 Treaty on European Union voting
sanctions, or the new EU rule of law budget conditionality rules show. However,
justifying such initiatives against populist parties is more normatively compli-
cated, and they are less likely to be used against populist than more clearly
anti-democratic or illiberal parties. This means that opposition to populist parties
will often be what I call democratic defence as ‘normal politics’ where the nature
of the democratic challenge posed by populist parties must first be negotiated in
the public sphere; and where both exceptional and normal tools of political oppo-
sition may be used, but where the latter typically predominate. The typology I
develop aims to better capture this reality.
Inspired by traditional approaches, but departing from them in important
ways, my approach classifies IoPPs with reference to two classificatory criteria:
the type of political actor that initiates a response against populists; and whether
the modes of engagement employed are ‘tolerant’ or ‘intolerant’. This constitutes a
typology with six property spaces (see Figure 1). The typology has been tested and
adapted in collaboration with a cross-Europe team of researchers studying oppo-
sition to populist parties in Poland, Hungary, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Spain
and Italy.16

Populist opponents: public authorities, parties and civil society

The first way to classify IoPPs is to distinguish between initiatives undertaken by
public authorities, political parties, or civil society actors. Each category poten-
tially incorporates political actors engaged in local, regional, state, and interna-
tional territorial arenas.
Public authorities encompass individuals or institutions empowered by consti-
tutional or ordinary law, or international agreement, to act in the public interest.
16
Also funded by the Carlsberg Foundation ‘Challenges for Europe Programme’ project on
Populism and Democratic Defence In Europe (CF20-008).

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 From Militant Democracy to Normal Politics? 495

IOPP INITIATOR

Guardians Gatekeepers Advocates

(Political
(Public (Civil Society)
Parties)
Authorities)

MODE OF Intolerant Rights-restrictions Ostracism Coercive

ENGAGEMENT (exceptionality, confrontation

illegitimacy/threat)

Tolerant ‘Ordinary’ legal Forbearance Adversarialism

controls and
(‘normal’ politics,
pedagogy
despite
disagreement)

Figure 1. Typology of IoPPs

Within states this includes the judicial, legislative, and executive branches of gov-
ernment, the bureaucratic apparatus, state agencies and substate authorities (such
as regions and local governments). International organisations such as the EU and the
Council of Europe can be considered public authorities with authority delegated to
make authoritative policy and judicial decisions on behalf of the member states and
European citizens. Also included in this category are international agencies carrying
out the mandate of their founding governments and initiatives of foreign govern-
ments against populist parties (either in opposition or government) in another state.
Political parties are typically organisations which, in Alan Ware’s formulation,
‘seek influence in a state’, often, but not always, fielding candidates in elections to
occupy positions in legislative and executive bodies at various territorial levels.17
The category includes parties of both government and opposition, and in recog-
nition of parties’ internal diversity, encompasses party leaders, factions, parliamen-
tary groups, and a party’s organisation. It also includes transnational party
federations and European Parliament groups.
Civil society actors are private groups or institutions organised by individuals for
their own ends. Civil society actors include a very wide range of non-governmen-
tal actors, including lobby and advocacy groups, social movements, businesses,
churches, trade unions, neighbourhood groups, cultural associations, mainstream
and social media. Some civil society actors operate transnationally, such as the
Catholic Church, human rights organisations, such as Amnesty International
17
A. Ware, Political Parties and Party Systems (Oxford University Press 1995).

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 496 Angela K. Bourne EuConst 18 (2022)

POLITICAL
PARTIES
Party
PUBLIC controlled
Movement CIVIL
parties, SOCIETY
AUTHORITY public
party-linked
authority orgs.

Figure 2. Overlapping
fields: Actors Opposing
Populist Parties

or Human Rights Watch, and social movements like Occupy, Black Lives Matter
or #MeToo.
An advantage of adopting this expanded, actor-centred approach is that it
acknowledges that public authorities, political parties and civil society actors deploy
different sources of authority and resources and play different roles when opposing
populist parties. One difficulty with an actor-centred approach, though, is that it draws
a line between spheres of political life that are often overlapping. Acknowledging this
complexity, relations between public authorities, political parties and civil society actors
can be conceived as interconnected spheres (see Figure 2). Where they overlap, we can
identify recognisable mixed categories, namely party-controlled public authorities,
movement parties and party-linked organisations. Thus, the broader category, public
authorities, would typically include Courts, state bureaucracy, government agencies,
the ombudsman, parliament, and international organisations, which exercise consti-
tutionally and legally defined public functions (at least in theory) independently of
political parties. On the other hand, the offices of president, prime minister, ministers,
the cabinet, and those running local and regional governments are typically controlled
by political parties.

Tolerant and intolerant modes of engagement with populists

The second way to classify IoPPs is by ‘modes of engagement’, which can be ‘tol-
erant’ or ‘intolerant’. In my approach, the difference between these modes of
engagement relate to criteria of ‘exceptionality’ and ‘normality’.
Intolerant modes of engagement subject populist parties to ‘exceptional’ treat-
ment. Within liberal democracies, ‘exceptionality’ occurs when populist parties
are denied rights, privileges, and respect which political parties would usually
enjoy, either by law or in practice, because of their representative function in a
democratic society and/or as a governing party in the international sphere.
Intolerant modes of engagement include a wide variety of legal and political ini-
tiatives, including: restrictions on the right of association (such as party bans);
restrictions of expression (such as displaying Nazi paraphernalia); and collusion

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 From Militant Democracy to Normal Politics? 497

among mainstream parties to reduce anti-system party success at elections or pre-

vent their participation in government (cordon sanitaire, or ostracism).
In the international sphere, exceptional treatment for populist parties principally
entails the denial of rights, privileges, and respect given to those running state insti-
tutions by virtue of agreements between states (like treaties) and international norms
(like sovereignty and non-intervention). Additionally, in highly developed interna-
tional organisations like the EU, where populist parties may have important repre-
sentative functions (like participating in the European Parliament), exceptionality also
entails a denial of the rights, privileges, and respect for political parties. Examples of
such initiatives include the expulsion or suspension of a state led by populists from an
international organisation, and the imposition of political and economic sanctions on
such a state, party, or its representatives for actions within the state that are deemed to
threaten liberal democratic institutions, principles, and values.
Exceptionality is observed empirically when it can be shown that a rule, practice,
or norm with general application is suspended in the case of a populist party. Rules
can be formal, such as the legal provisions of a constitution establishing a general right
to association and speech, legislation regulating state funding for political parties, or
regulations permitting the proportional distribution of positions of power (e.g. in a
parliament). Rules may also be informal, including political practices permitting (at
least theoretical) collaboration, for example, in elections or government, between
political parties with differing ideological positions, and norms of non-violence
and civility regulating political engagement in the public sphere.
Tolerant modes of engagement subject populist parties to the same norms, rules
and practices in democratic politics and international relations as those applied to other
parties and states not led by populists. Tolerant modes of engagement are the negation
of intolerant modes of engagement, in that they subject populist parties to ‘normal’,
rather than ‘exceptional’ treatment. In other words, tolerant IoPPs engage with populist
parties through the modalities of ‘normal politics’: applying ‘ordinary law’, criminal
and civil codes in the Courts; application of parliamentary and administrative proce-
dures; information campaigns and civic education; competition among political parties
to win ‘office’, ‘policy’ and ‘votes’; and protest, contestation, persuasion, and accom-
modation in the public sphere. As the negation of exceptionality, ‘normal’ treatment
can be observed empirically when opposition to populist parties follows norms, rules
and practices with general applicability, even in cases where opponents regard the ideas
or behaviour of a populist party as highly objectionable.
Applying these distinctions empirically with colleagues from the Carlsberg
Challenges for Europe project, we observed three sets of norms, rules and prac-
tices of general application which were suspended or observed, depending on the
type of populist opponent. IoPPs undertaken by public authorities, which were
in accordance with constitutional norms and rules providing for the free exchange
of political ideas within states and the principle of non-interference in the

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 498 Angela K. Bourne EuConst 18 (2022)

domestic political affairs of states in the international sphere met the criteria of
‘normality’ for tolerant IoPPs. IoPPs suspending or contravening those principles
meet the criteria of ‘exceptionality’. IoPPs undertaken by political parties meet-
ing the criteria of ‘normality’ were consistent with the general practices of demo-
cratic competition whereby parties keep their options open regarding their
political platform and/or alliance strategies. IoPPs meeting the criteria of excep-
tionality did not. IoPPs undertaken by civil society actors met the criteria of
‘normality’ when they were in accordance with norms, practices and rules favour-
ing non-coercive forms of expressing disagreement with political opponents. I dis-
cuss each of these points in more detail below.
It is important to emphasise that the distinction between tolerant and intoler-
ant modes of engagement here is practice-based, rather than a normative theory of
what constitutes tolerant or intolerant forms of opposition to populist parties.
That is, initiatives are classified depending on whether they are exceptional or
not, and more specifically whether they suspend or observe a concrete rule, prac-
tice, or norm. Adopting a practiced-based distinction between tolerant and intol-
erant initiatives has several implications. Firstly, it means that those opposing
populist parties may not recognise their actions as tolerant or intolerant in the
sense I define it here. For example, it is conceivable that one may adopt what
I call a tolerant mode of engagement whilst claiming that the behaviour of the
populist party is intolerable. An opponent may take a populist party to court
for hate speech or political corruption, challenge its legislative initiatives by voting
against them in parliament, or organise a public protest. These actions may be
accompanied by denunciations claiming the party is fascist, Nazi, racist, dictato-
rial, barbaric, or diabolical. On the face of it, these statements do not seem to
signal an attitude of tolerance. Nevertheless, the typology classifies initiatives
involving the ordinary courts for racist speech, voting in parliament, and non-vio-
lent protest as tolerant modes of engagement because these initiatives do not sus-
pend any political right, or deny privileges usually accorded political parties in
democratic politics. Once this point is understood, it should become clear that
tolerant IoPPs do not require a passive attitude towards populist parties or the
acceptance of their ideas and behaviour uncritically. Tolerance entails, as
McKinnon defines it, ‘putting up with what you oppose’, even if another person’s
life choices or actions shock, enrage, frighten, or disgust.18 Tolerance is something
other than indifference. It entails putting up with a party you oppose, and when
acting politically against it doing so in ways that do not subject it to exceptional
treatment.
This tension between daily or public perceptions of what constitutes tolerance
and my practice-based conception may raise the objection that I mislabel modes

18
C. McKinnon, Toleration: A Critical Introduction (Routledge 2006) p. 4.

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 From Militant Democracy to Normal Politics? 499

of engagement. It is, after all, reasonable to expect scholarly concepts to resonate

with broader public meanings. In response, I would argue that these labels reflect
a long tradition in the existing literature distinguishing between tolerant and
intolerant forms of opposition to extremist, anti-system, radical and populist par-
ties. Many of the typologies discussed above distinguish between initiatives con-
sidered ‘intolerant’, ‘repressive’, ‘exclusive’, or ‘repressive’ on the one hand, and
‘tolerant’, ‘persuasive’, ‘accommodative’ or ‘inclusionary’ on the other.19
Similarly, distinctions between ‘exceptional’ and ‘normal’ or ‘ordinary’ responses
to parties deemed liberal democratic challengers are a common theme in the lit-
erature. For example, many scholars draw a line between militant democracy
restrictions on political rights and ‘ordinary law’, which can itself sometimes
be mobilised against parties deemed a challenge for liberal democracy (when they
commit criminal code violations, for instance).20 A similar distinction has been
drawn in relation to EU law provisions for sanctions (like Article 7 TEU voting
suspension procedures) and procedures used to deal with rule of law violations in
‘normal times’ (like infringement proceedings).21 Regarding party responses, the
strategy of ostracism has been described as ‘a drastic one, which must be justified
by portraying the other as some kind of evil party that should not be dealt with in
any way’.22 In contrast, the decision to invite a party into a governing coalition has
been described as treating them as ‘normal’ parties, or as ‘ordinary political
opponents’.23
More importantly, I would argue that one reason why labelling modes of
engagement tolerant or intolerant is useful, is that it acknowledges a link between
scholarly and public debates about tolerance and its limits. Given a presumption
in favour of tolerance in liberal democracies, intolerant IoPPs are consistently
accompanied by a justification which explicitly or implicitly claims that the ideas
and behaviour of their target are illegitimate and/or constitute a threat to liberal
democracy. The broad themes of these justifications resonate with more-or-less
settled general principles regulating limits of toleration in liberal democracies.
Democratic theorists have long debated the conditions under which the tolerant
may refuse to tolerate the intolerant. John Locke’s groundbreaking theory of

19
E.g. Fox and Nolte supra n. 3; Capoccia supra n. 3; Downs, supra n. 3.
20
E.g. Müller, supra n. 6; Tyulkina, supra n. 6; Malkopoulou and Norman, supra n. 6.
21
M. Blauberger and R. D Kelemen, ‘Can Courts Rescue National Democracy? Judicial
Safeguards against Democratic Backsliding in the EU’, 24 Journal of European Public Policy
(2017) p. 332.
22
J. van Spanje, Controlling the Electoral Marketplace. How Established Parties Ward Off
Competition (Springer International Publishers 2018) p. 38.
23
J. van Spanje and W. van Der Brug, ‘The Party as Pariah: The Exclusion of Anti-Immigration
Parties and its Effect on their Ideological Positions’, 30 West European Politics (2007) p. 1022;
Rummens and Abts, supra n. 3, p. 649.

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 500 Angela K. Bourne EuConst 18 (2022)

tolerance, for example, did not require the state to tolerate opinions that ‘mani-
festly undermine the foundations of society’, or religious beliefs deemed to be at
the service of a foreign prince (such as, problematically, Catholics).24 In our times,
intolerant modes of engagement typically acknowledge something along the lines
of Popper’s ‘paradox of tolerance’, or the threat that ‘unlimited tolerance must lead
to the disappearance of tolerance’.25 Contemporary justifications for intolerant
initiatives also resonate with Rawls’ argument what while ‘members of a well-
ordered society should have confidence in the resilience of “free institutions”
and the “inherent stability of a just constitution”, tolerance can be reasonably
denied “when it is necessary for preserving equal liberty itself ”’.26
This is not to say that we can turn to regulatory principles or normative con-
victions to fully explain why opponents adopt one or other mode of engagement
with populist parties. We may sometimes be able to do so. However, choices of
opposition strategies may be limited by what is practically possible, given the
institutional setting and the relative power of, for example, governing populist
parties compared to their opponents. Nor can we faithfully expect those who
do have the power to deploy intolerant initiatives never to do so maliciously.
The point is that using tolerance/intolerance to label different modes of engage-
ment with populist parties, retains the link between practices of opposition and
broader philosophical debates about the circumstances under which rights restric-
tions, or denial of due privileges or respect, can be justifiably limited, at least in a
general way. So, while the typology does not provide a theory of tolerant and
intolerant forms of opposition against populist parties, it facilitates further reflec-
tion in this direction.

I    

Intolerant IoPPs subject populist parties to ‘exceptional’ treatment at odds with
norms, rules or practices, which grant rights, privileges and respect to parties by
virtue of their representative function in a democratic society and in the interna-
tional sphere by virtue of their governing roles. In addition, intolerant IoPPs are
undertaken by those who regard populist parties as illegitimate actors undeserving
of toleration and/or claim those populist parties threaten liberal democratic insti-
tutions or values.

J. Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration; see also A. Tuckness, ‘Rethinking the Intolerant
24

Locke’, 46(2) American Journal of Political Science (2002) p. 288.

25
K. Popper, The Open Society (Routledge 1966) p. 265.
26
J. Rawls, A Theory of Justice. (Oxford University Press 1971) p. 219; see also J. Quong, ‘The
Rights of Unreasonable Citizens’, 13 The Journal of Political Philosophy (2004) p. 314.

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 From Militant Democracy to Normal Politics? 501

Rights restrictions by public authorities

When intolerant IoPPs are undertaken by public authorities they seek to delimit
the participation of populist parties in the public sphere and/or the impact of their
ideas and actions on public policy by: (a) restricting certain kinds of political
rights, including rights of association and expression exercised by populist parties
and their representatives; as well as (b) restricting rights to obtain access to public
goods (such as funds) which they would otherwise have had to right to obtain.
IoPPs that restrict such rights are often typical of militant democracy. Tyulkina
helpfully distinguishes between rights restrictions typically justified by the preven-
tive rationale of militant democracy on the one hand, and ‘ordinary’ types of
rights-restrictions, on the other.27 This distinction is important because civil
and political liberties are never absolute and are often subject to limitations quite
apart from those justified as preventing harm to the liberal democratic system.
Militant democracy, according to Tyulkina, has a narrow area of application, tar-
geting a limited range of rights related to ‘participation in political and public
discourse’, rights whose abuse has ‘the potential to affect the operation of the state
as a constitutional democracy’.28 Thus, limitations on rights like family and pri-
vate life, and social and economic rights, are difficult to justify with militant
democracy rationales because their application is unlikely to affect the operation
of the state as a constitutional democracy.29 In other words, the criteria of excep-
tionality is met when those subject to restrictions in their political rights are denied
the right to freely exchange their political ideas on the same conditions as others.
Another way to think about this is to note that rights-restricting IoPPs suspend
tolerance for political speech in relation to two core features of democracy that
one of the foremost theorists of democracy Robert Dahl describes as ‘effective
participation’ and ‘enlightened understanding’. To satisfy these features, members
of a polity ought to have, respectively ‘equal and effective opportunities for mak-
ing their views known to other members’ and a chance for ‘learning about the
relevant alternative policies and their likely consequences’ before new policies
are adopted.30
Germany, long the prototypical case of a militant democracy, provides many
examples of rights-restricting IoPPs. Parties may be banned or denied public
funding in Germany if they, ‘by reason of their aims or the behaviour of their
adherents, seek to undermine or abolish the free democratic basic order or to
endanger the existence of the Federal Republic of Germany’ (Article 21(2-3),
Basic Law). Parties that may better fit the definition of an association may
27
Tyulkina, supra n. 6.
28
Ibid., p. 46-47.
29
Ibid., p. 46.
30
R. Dahl, On Democracy (Yale University Press 2000) p. 37.

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 502 Angela K. Bourne EuConst 18 (2022)

be banned for such reasons (Article 9, Basic Law). In addition, rights to freedom
of expression, the press, of teaching, assembly, association, privacy of correspon-
dence, posts and telecommunications, rights of property, and of asylum may be
denied if used to ‘combat the free democratic basic order’ (Article 18, Basic Law).
Other rights limitations include surveillance and reporting of political activity by
the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Verfassungschutz) for
parties considered a threat to the free democratic basic order.
In the international sphere, ‘exceptional’ treatment by public authorities entails
a denial of ‘rights’ to states led by populist parties. Although the concept of ‘rights’
has a different hue in national compared to international law, we can conceive of
rights in the international sphere as entitlements granted by virtue of a state being
party to an international agreement such as a treaty, and in case of the EU, by
virtue of its laws and regulations. Exceptional treatment in this arena can include
denying rights to participate in international institutions (including expulsion,
suspicion of voting rights), or the application of sanctions preventing access to
public goods (like funds) which a state would otherwise have a right to receive.
Application of Article 7(2-3) of the Treaty on the European Union is a prime
example of rights-restricting IoPPs in the international sphere. The article permits
the Council to suspend voting rights of a member state deemed to be in breach of
the common values of the EU.

Ostracism by other political parties

When intolerant IoPPs are undertaken by other political parties, they aim to
delimit the participation of populist parties in the public sphere and/or the impact
of their ideas and actions on public policy by refusing to cooperate with populist
parties, thereby denying them access to positions of political power and signalling
their illegitimacy in democratic politics.31 Ostracism is the act of intentionally
excluding someone from a social group or activity. For political parties, ostracism
is a strategy to exclude a populist party from a collaborative political activity on prin-
cipled grounds, or more specifically because populists are considered illegitimate and/or
a threat to liberal democracy. Ostracism meets a criterion of exceptionality because
it suspends the general practice in democratic politics whereby political parties
keep their options open regarding their policy positions and/or alliance strategies.
This practice is not linked to specific norms or rules of democratic politics but
contributes to the goal of representation at the heart of modern liberal democra-
cies insofar as it permits parties to respond to changing citizen preferences.32 That

Downs, supra n. 3; D. Art, ‘Reacting to the Radical Right: Lessons from Germany and Austria’,
31

13(3) Party Politics (2007) p. 331; J. Van Spanje, supra n. 22.

32
Dahl, supra n. 30, p. 85; Rummens and Abts, supra n. 3, p. 654.

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 From Militant Democracy to Normal Politics? 503

parties keep their options open does not require they weigh all other parties as
equally attractive parties. The literature on coalition formation makes it clear that
cooperation choices are influenced by goals of ‘office’, ‘policy’ and ‘vote’ (among
other things).33
Four subtypes of ostracism can be identified. Electoral ostracism takes place
where parties compete to win votes, but decide to exclude, on principled grounds,
a populist party from electoral alliances, or from being favoured in other ways,
such as being named as a preferred option in two-vote electoral systems. In
the parliamentary arena, where legislation, political accountability, and the build-
ing and maintaining of government coalitions take place, political exclusion on
principled grounds can take different forms. The most widely researched of these
is governmental ostracism (or cordon sanitaire), or exclusion of parties from govern-
ing coalitions. A third form is parliamentary ostracism, including a principled
refusal to support all parliamentary initiatives of a populist party, no matter
how minor; a refusal to allocate parliamentary positions (eg committee chairs)
to populist parties; or suspension, expulsion or exclusion of parties from parlia-
mentary groups (eg, European Parliament suspensions of the Hungarian Fidesz
from European People’s Party in 2019, or the Slovakian SMER-SD from the
Party of European Socialists). Public ostracism is the intentional exclusion of pop-
ulist parties by competitors from activities or events in the public sphere, such as
refusal on principled grounds to invite populist parties to public debates.

Coercive confrontation by civil society actors

When intolerant IoPPs are undertaken by civil society actors they seek to delimit
the participation of populist parties in the public sphere and/or the impact of their
ideas and actions on public policy by using coercion, which in contemporary
Europe is usually undertaken to exclude, intimidate or express contempt, rather
than to entirely eliminate opponents as a rival. As used here, coercion is a form of
advocacy involving what Tilly defines as ‘collective violence’, or a form of con-
tentious claim making which ‘inflicts physical damage on persons and/or
objects’.34
Coercion is one of the main tactical repertoires available to civil society actors
engaged in contentious politics. Tilly identifies seven types of interpersonal vio-
lence:35 violent rituals, where a relatively well-defined and coordinated group
follows a ‘known script entailing the infliction of damage on itself or others’
(e.g. shaming ceremonies, lynching, hunger strikes); coordinated destruction,
33
W. Müller and K. Strøm, Policy Office or Votes? (Cambridge University Press 1999).
34
C. Tilly, The Politics of Collective Violence (Cambridge University Press 2003) p. 3.
35
Tilly, supra n. 34, p. 14-15.

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 504 Angela K. Bourne EuConst 18 (2022)

where persons or groups specialising in violence undertake a program that is dam-

aging to persons and/or objects (e.g. war, collective self-immolation, terrorism,
genocide, politicide); opportunism, where ‘as a consequence of shielding from rou-
tine surveillance and repression, individuals or clusters of individuals use imme-
diately damaging means to pursue generally forbitten ends’ (e.g. looting, revenge
killing); brawls ‘within a previously nonviolent gathering, two or more persons
begin attacking each other’s property (e.g. street fights or small scale battles
between political rivals); individual aggression, a single actor (or several uncon-
nected actors) engage(s) in immediately and predominantly destructive interac-
tions with another actor (e.g. rape, assaults, vandalism); and scattered attacks
where, in the course of small-scale and generally non-violent events, some pro-
testors undertake acts of violence (e.g. assaults on government agents, clandestine
attacks on symbolic objects or throwing vegetables or eggs at politicians).
Coercive IoPPs meet a criterion of exceptionality because they suspend the gen-
eral norm, rules and practices in liberal democracies whereby non-state actors make
political claims without coercion. As John Keane observes in Democracy and
Violence, a unique characteristic of contemporary democracies is a self-understand-
ing that democracy is a ‘bundle of non-violent power-sharing techniques’ and a
‘learned quality of non-violent openness’.36 While democracies never eliminate vio-
lence, the ambition to control it is institutionalised in procedures where ‘the violated
get a fair public hearing, and fair compensation : : : [and] those in charge of the
means of violence are publicly known, publicly accountable to others – and peace-
fully removable from office’.37 The very concept of ‘civil society’, as Keane observes,
has a close affinity with a norm of non-coercion, conceived as ‘a site of complexity,
choice and dynamism’ and the ‘elimination of violence from human affairs’.38 Those
willing to deploy coercion tend to regard their opponents as illegitimate actors
undeserving of ‘civility’. They approximate Chantal Mouffe’s conception of ‘antag-
onistic’ opponents, engaged in a struggle to eliminate an enemy, in a battle over
mutually incompatible political projects and identities.39

T   

Tolerant IoPPs observe the norms, rules and practices typically granting rights, priv-
ileges and respect to political parties by virtue of their representative function in a
liberal democratic society, and in the international sphere, by virtue of their governing
roles. They may be accompanied by harsh critique and grave disagreement, however.
36
J. Keane, Violence and Democracy (Cambridge University Press 2004) p. 3, 9.
37
Keane, supra n. 36, p. 9.
38
Ibid., p. 44, 52.
39
C. Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox (Verso 2000).

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 From Militant Democracy to Normal Politics? 505

‘Ordinary’ legal controls and pedagogy by public authorities

When tolerant IoPPs are undertaken by public authorities, they seek to delimit the
participation of populist parties in the public sphere and/or the impact of their ideas
and actions on public policy by: (a) deploying ordinary legal controls, such as con-
stitutional checks and balances, civil and criminal litigation, legislative and policy
change; as well as (b) practices of public pedagogy, such as civic education and con-
demnatory declarations. These initiatives meet a criterion of normality because they
observe the general practice of liberal democratic and international politics whereby
political parties, or governments run by them, may freely express their political
ideas, or obtain access to public goods, on the same conditions as others. That
is, IoPPs in this category use rules and procedures designed to affect all parties
and states, address illegal behaviour in general, and/or seek to change political ideas
through education, dialogue or discourse. There are four main subtypes.
The first is checks and balances of liberal democratic politics, which are insti-
tutionalised in varying (usually constitutionally entrenched) rules for separate but
interdependent judicial, executive and parliamentary bodies. It includes the use of
procedures vetting executive and judicial appointments; dismissal of governments
or ministers in no-confidence votes; impeachment; establishing investigatory
committees; the rulings of constitutional courts; and acts of secondary supervisory
bodies like ombudsmen or independent media regulators. In the international
sphere, rulings of human rights courts, such as the European Court of
Human Rights, provide additional checks against rights violations.
A second subtype is judicial control. This IoPP subtype includes invocations of
ordinary law against populist parties for infractions mostly spelt out in civil and
criminal codes (or equivalent). It includes convictions for corruption and abuse of
office, violation of party funding rules, as well as hate speech and hate crimes.
While hate speech rules clearly limit freedom of expression, they typically aim
to protect the dignity of victims and public peace rather than the subversion
of democratic institutions per se.40 Holocaust denial sits closer to the boundary
between this subtype and rights-restricting IoPPs, given that it has a been ‘closely
linked : : : to efforts on the right to restore the “positive” image of Nazism and
prewar fascism’.41 Nevertheless, it can also be interpreted as being a ‘particularly
malevolent form of racist incitement’, which justifies its inclusion within this cat-
egory.42 In the EU, IoPPs prosecuting illegal acts include tactical use of infringe-
ment proceedings against illiberal or anti-democratic practices of member states.

Niesen, supra n. 3, p. 548; E. Bleich, ‘The Rise of Hate Speech and Hate Crime Laws in Liberal
40

Democracies’, 37(6) Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies (2011) p. 917.

41
R. Wistrich, Holocaust Denial: The Politics of Perfidy (De Bruyter 2012); see P. Behrens et al.,
Holocaust and Genocide Denial: A Contextual Perspective (Routledge 2019).
42
Wistrich, supra n. 41, p. 25; Bleich, supra n. 40.

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 506 Angela K. Bourne EuConst 18 (2022)

A third subtype is a more diffuse set of policy and legislative responses. These
include: (a) new legislation, reforms or public programmes which aim to address
problematic behaviour of populist parties (e.g. online hate speech); or (b) longer-
term programmes of civic education (eg in the school curriculum, or training of
public officials). Programmes run by international organisations for democratic
education can also be included in this category. The subtype includes: (c) changes
in electoral rules, such as requirements for internal party democracy, or rules
affecting populist party vote-to-seat ratios, and forms of what Capoccia calls
(d) ‘anti-extremist legislation’, which typically empowers public authorities (espe-
cially the executive) with special powers to deal with an immediate extremist
threat (among other things) in a state of emergency or siege, or in cases of sedition
or treason.43 The policy and legislative IoPP subtype also includes (e) policy
reforms addressing grievances underpinning populist party support, although care
is needed to be sure such reforms are specifically designed to achieve this and not
other more general goals.
A final category of tolerant IoPPs by public authorities is public persuasion,
which includes speech and acts aiming to dissuade populist parties from under-
taking actions that may undermine liberal democratic institutions or to persuade
others not to support populist parties or their ideas. It can include speech by rep-
resentatives of public authorities (presidents, prime ministers, the EU
Commission’s president) condemning or demonising populist parties.
Demonisation is defined as a moral judgement ‘portraying a person as the per-
sonification of evil’.44 Public persuasion can also include dialogical processes,
whereby populist parties or their supporters are persuaded, through rational argu-
mentation, social learning, moral discourses, emotional appeals or new issue
frames, to adopt new opinions, identities and/or interests. This can take place
locally, when for example participation of populist parties in governmental or par-
liamentary institutions may restore populist party members’ ‘faith in politics’,45 or
in international fora, such as the European Commission’s ‘Rule of Law’
Framework or EU Article 7(1) Treaty on European Union hearings. Public per-
suasion can also take the form of information aiming to ‘name and shame’ its
targets, produced by public authorities such as government departments
and agencies, or international bodies such as the Council for Security and
Cooperation in Europe and European Commission against Racism and
Intolerance.

43
Capoccia, supra n. 3, p. 56; Tyulkina, supra n. 6.
S. van Heerden and W. van der Brug, ‘Demonisation and Electoral Support for Populist Right
44

Parties’, 47 Electoral Studies (2017) p. 37.

45
N. Rosenblum, On the Side of the Angels: An appreciation of Parties and Partisanship (Princeton
University Press 2008).

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 From Militant Democracy to Normal Politics? 507

Forbearance by political parties

When tolerant IoPPs are undertaken by other political parties, they aim to delimit
the participation of populist parties in the public sphere and/or the impact of their
ideas and actions on public policy by: (a) using ordinary tactics of party-political
opposition; and (b) cooperating with, or copying, populist parties in the hope
that, in addition to advantages for themselves, IoPPs may induce an ideological
moderation of, or weaken, the populist party. Forbearance involves self-restraint,
preventing oneself from saying or doing something otherwise preferred, or suffer-
ance, unwillingly granting someone else permission to do something. As Downs
has put it in the case of tolerant responses to extremists, there is a ‘tendency to
exercise restraint in the face of objectionable pariah parties, even when such tol-
erance is at odds with other democratic values (protection of minorities, for exam-
ple)’.46 Forbearance in the form of parties’ decisions to cooperate with or copy
populist parties they oppose meet a criterion of normality because they observe
the general practice in democratic politics whereby political parties keep their
options open regarding their policy positions and/or alliance strategies. As noted
above, this contributes to the goal of representation at the heart of modern liberal
democracies insofar as it permits parties to respond to changing citizen preferen-
ces.47 As such, a party that exercises forbearance in relation to a populist opponent
engages with that party principally to achieve strategic goals of ‘office’, ‘policy’
and ‘votes’.
There are several subtypes.48 Policy co-optation involves ‘parroting’ or ‘copying,
at least partially [a] party’s core issue positions’ with the paradigmatic example
being ‘contagion to the right’ on immigration policy.49 Electoral cooperation occurs
where a populists’ opponents are willing to form electoral alliances with them.
Governmental cooperation involves inclusion of populist parties in governing coa-
litions, while parliamentary cooperation involves routinised cooperation with a
populist party to pass legislation and manage parliamentary business. It could also
include less formalised forms of engagement in parliamentary business such as
involvement in budget negotiations. A final form is public cooperation, or the rou-
tine inclusion of populist parties in activities or events in the public sphere, such
as television debates or hustings, and informal dialogue between populist and
non-populist parties.

46
Downs, supra n. 3, p. 31.
47
Dahl, supra n. 30, p. 85; A. Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy (Harper & Row 1957);
Rummens and Abts, supra n. 3, p. 654.
48
The three of these (legislative collaboration, executive collaboration, electoral collaboration) are
inspired by van Spanje, supra n. 22, p. 40.
49
van Spanje, supra n. 22, p. 24; Meguid, supra n. 14; Albertazzi et al., supra n. 3.

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 508 Angela K. Bourne EuConst 18 (2022)

An additional subtype of forbearance is oppositional politics, where populists’

partisan opponents aim to defeat populists using ordinary tactics of electoral cam-
paigning or parliamentary procedure. It includes initiatives of opposition parties
to defeat or amend the legislation of a governing populist party, to interpellate
government representatives, establish investigatory committees and challenge
government acts in the courts. IoPPs such as a motion of no-confidence in
the government or a minister, or impeachment, may start out as oppositional pol-
itics but if they succeed they become checks and balances, a subcategory of tolerant
IoPPs by public authorities. And finally, political persuasion is analogous to public
persuasion, involving acts or speech by political parties, their leaders or members
aiming to persuade others not to support populist parties or their ideas. It can take
the form of condemnation, demonisation, ‘naming or shaming’, or dialogue,
among other things. It can also include symbolic actions, such as what
Meguid and Albertazzi et al. classify as a strategy of ‘ignoring’ a competing party,
which aims to signal to voters that a party’s policy proposals lack merit.50

Adversarialism by civil society actors

When tolerant IoPPs are undertaken by civil society actors they seek to delimit the
participation of populist parties in the public sphere and/or the impact of their ideas
and actions on public policy by using non-coercive means of public protest dem-
onstrating a claim in public.51 Adversarial IoPPs meet a criteria of normality by
observing norms of civility, at a minimum committing to non-violent engagement
with political opponents, but often involving some level of acceptance of political
pluralism and the open-ended nature of political struggle.52 It is named after
Mouffe’s conception of the ‘adversary’ in her model of democratic politics as ‘agnos-
tic pluralism’. As Mouffe argues, the adversary is ‘someone whose ideas we combat
but who’s right to defend these ideas we do not put into question’.53 Adversarial
IoPPs thus tend to treat populists as one opponent among others in political life
and use forms of opposition typically deployed against other types of parties as well.
Adversarial IoPPs, as forms of contentious politics, ‘demonstrate a claim, either
to objects of the claim, to power holders, or to significant third parties’, but can
take a very wide variety of forms.54 They include demonstrations, marches, strikes,
50
Meguid, supra n. 14; Albertazzi et al., supra n. 3.
51
S. Tarrow, Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics (Cambridge
University Press 2011) p. 98.
52
Keane, supra n. 36; see also Mouffe, supra n. 39; S. Rummens, ‘Resolving the Paradox of
Tolerance’, in Malkopoulou and Kirshner, supra n. 6.
53
Mouffe, supra n. 39, p. 192.
54
Tarrow, supra n. 51, p. 98; S. Tarrow and C. Tilly, Contentious Politics (Oxford University Press
2006).

https://doi.org/10.1017/S1574019622000268 Published online by Cambridge University Press

 From Militant Democracy to Normal Politics? 509

litigation, lobbying, boycotts, civil disobedience, hunger strikes, art and satire,
public debate, (dis)information campaigns, using both traditional and social
media. Such actions may involve exclusively local actors or transnational net-
works. It often involves the formation of alliances between civil society actors
and more powerful actors, such as political parties, or pressuring public authorities
to use their resources to constrain populist parties. Protest may employ tactical
repertoire pursuing instrumental goals, such as publicising a grievance, challenging
legislation, or stigmatising an opponent, or take an expressive form, by, for exam-
ple, modelling through performance some desired alternative forms of social rela-
tions, decision-making, or political culture.55 Protestors may use non-
confrontational insider tactics, such as letter-writing, leafletting, lobbying, press
conferences and lawsuits or more confrontational outsider tactics, such as sit-
ins, demonstrations, blockades and strikes.56 Protest may be conventional ‘ritual-
ised public performances’, using tried and tested action forms accepted as legiti-
mate by elites and easily understood by bystanders.57 Or, they may be more
innovative, disruptive action forms, perhaps illegal, which ‘break with routine,
startle bystanders and leave elites disoriented, at least for a time’.58

C
This article presents a new typology mapping the terrain of contemporary oppo-
sition to populist parties. It has, I argue, several advantages. Firstly, the typology
eases systematic collection of data on opposition to populist parties. It provides
operationalisable definitions and recognisable empirical illustrations of IoPP types
and subtypes. This is an advantage over many earlier classification schemes often
based on difficult-to-operationalise ideal or constructed types. Cross-national
comparison of broader patterns in use of IoPP-types allows us to draw a more
accurate picture of how opposition to populist parties varies in different countries,
or in relation to the different types of left, right and centrist, governing and oppo-
sition populist parties. This allows us to evaluate whether contemporary IoPPs ‘fit’
longer-standing distinctions sometimes drawn between countries seen to adopt
either tolerant or intolerant response to challengers, such as contrasts between
intolerant, militant tradition in Germany or a more tolerant tradition in the

55
V. Taylor and N. Van Dyke, ‘“Get up, Stand up”: Tactical Repertoires of Social Movements’,
in D.A. Snow et al. (eds.), The Blackwell Companion of Social Movements (Blackwell Publishing Ltd
2007) p. 266-267.
56
Taylor and Van Dyke, supra n. 76, p. 267.
57
Tarrow, supra n. 51, p. 99.
58
Ibid., p. 99.

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 510 Angela K. Bourne EuConst 18 (2022)

United States, the United Kingdom or Scandinavia. Where the fit is poor, more
nuanced models of IoPPs can be developed.
The typology integrates initiatives we know a lot about, such as repressive,
state-based initiatives relying on exceptional measures, and responses by political
parties, with those which we can observe but which are rarely addressed in the
militant democracy and democratic defence literature, such as constitutional
review of government acts, criminal proceedings, the actions of other states
and international organisations, and protest by civil society actors. Yet it keeps
distinctions between tolerant and intolerant modes of engagement with populists,
which reflect the broad lines of long-standing debates about how to address the
dilemma of ‘tolerating the intolerant’ in liberal democracies. As such, the
approach facilitates dialogue between empirical and normative analysis of
responses to populist parties, and opens up new terrain for normative theories
on lesser-known types of IoPPs (such as ordinary legal controls and pedagogy,
coercive confrontation, adversarialism and international IoPPs more generally).
Furthermore, by providing a conceptual rubric that better captures the wide range
of initiatives actually used in opposition to populist parties, it becomes easier to
develop theories of effective opposition. More specifically, the typology points to a
wide range of social-scientific fields providing answers to the questions about how
law, politics, and international relations produce change. Among other things, it
invites reflection on how IoPPs may affect populist parties by enforcing national
and international law; manipulating strategic incentives in the context of demo-
cratic competition; exploiting interdependence to leverage concessions; and
through persuasion.

https://doi.org/10.1017/S1574019622000268 Published online by Cambridge University Press