Daly, T.G. and Jones, B.C. orcid.org/0000-0003-2344-976X (2020) Parties versus democracy : Addressing today’s political-party threats to democratic rule. International Journal of Constitutional Law, 18 (2). pp. 509-538. ISSN 1474-2640
Abstract
The growing threat to liberal democracy worldwide is, in many ways, a political-party threat. Recent years have witnessed the rise of a range of authoritarian populist, illiberal, far-right, nativist, and extremist parties. Some have entered government in countries including Hungary, Poland, Austria and Italy. Germany’s Alternativ für Deutschland (AfD) is now the main parliamentary opposition. Beyond Europe we see democratic structures threatened or incrementally dismantled through the subversion of an established democratic party by an outsider (e.g., Donald Trump in the U.S., or Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines) or ascendance of the extremist wing of a right-wing party (e.g., India’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)). Parties and party leaders occupying an ill-defined space on the political spectrum – a form of “far-right lite” – today generally present a much greater threat to democratic governance than overtly anti-democratic fringe outfits, such as the National Democratic Party (NPD) of Germany. The ambiguity of such parties, their growing size, their entry into government, the subversion of “good” democratic parties by a “bad” leadership, and the rise of the “shadow party’ and intensifying external control mean that contemporary political-party threats seriously frustrate the possibility of remedial action afforded by existing public law and policy mechanisms. They also require us to reflect anew on crafting novel remedies and to revisit our deep assumptions about parties as creatures of central constitutional importance.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2020. Oxford University Press and New York University School of Law. This is an author-produced version of a paper subsequently published in International Journal of Constitutional Law. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. |
Keywords: | political parties; democracy; representation; democratic decay |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > School of Law (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 12 May 2020 09:51 |
Last Modified: | 04 Aug 2022 00:13 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Oxford University Press (OUP) |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1093/icon/moaa025 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:160478 |