BETWEEN MILITANT DEMOCRACY AND CITIZEN VIGILANTISM:

USING CITIZENS’ ASSEMBLIES TO KEEP PARTIES DEMOCRATIC

Authors

  • Tore Vincents Olsen Aarhus University
  • Juha Tuovinen

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.25192/ISSN.1982-0496.RDFD.V.29.II.2806

Abstract

The essential role of parties in democracies makes it important to keep them democratic. This article argues for sortition-based citizens’ assemblies (CAs) organized in and by civil society to formulate democratic standards for political parties to follow, to evaluate them individually and to criticize them publicly if they do not. This is a third and potentially complementary way to keeping parties democratic, placed between militant democracy on the one hand and citizen vigilantism on the other. Militant democracy is challenged by the fact that few democratically problematic parties are ostensibly anti-democratic and therefore likely to fall under the legal criteria for issuing party bans and other legal sanctions. Militant democratic measures are also likely to be ineffective and are vulnerable to abuse. Citizen vigilantism, whereby active democratic citizens take on the responsibility for protecting democracy, deals better with the ambiguous nature of democratically problematic parties but suffers from a lack of democratic authorization and clear standards of critique. While not perfect, the proposed model remedies many of the shortcomings of both approaches. Contributing to an emerging literature on CAs as instruments in the protection of democracy, the article evaluates the model’s normative justifiability, feasibility and likely effectiveness.

Keywords: citizen vigilantism; militant democracy; denunciation and shame; party regulation; assembly of citizens based on lottery

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Author Biographies

Tore Vincents Olsen, Aarhus University

Doutor em Ciência Política, Departamento de Ciência Política pela Universidade de Copenhague, (2006). Pesquisador nas áreas de: Teorias da tolerância, reconhecimento e multiculturalismo, democracia pós-nacional, deliberação e compromisso, educação, cidadania. Políticas de imigração e integração, educação para a cidadania e integração europeia.

Juha Tuovinen

Pesquisador de pós-doutorado na Universidade Centro-Europeia e pesquisador no projeto "Proporcionalidade no Processo Legislativo" do Instituto de Democracia de Israel. Professor Assistente na Universidade de Durham.

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Published

26-08-2024

How to Cite

Olsen, T. V., & Tuovinen, J. (2024). BETWEEN MILITANT DEMOCRACY AND CITIZEN VIGILANTISM: : USING CITIZENS’ ASSEMBLIES TO KEEP PARTIES DEMOCRATIC. Revista Direitos Fundamentais & Democracia, 29(2). https://doi.org/10.25192/ISSN.1982-0496.RDFD.V.29.II.2806