Democratic Action Research Articles

From Stormont to Strasbourg – militant democracy in consociations

ABSTRACT This article joins the nascent literature exploring the nexus of consociational power-sharing and militant democracy. While the two ideas appear to be different answers to different challenges, the respective empirical research agendas have been converging with militant democratic scholarship’s increasing interest in ethnically and religiously divided societies. Besides analysing the relationship between the two concepts, the article reviews the militant democratic provisions in various contemporary consociations, with a particular focus on Northern Ireland, the jurisdiction with the most explicit arrangements on restrictive measures protecting its democratic procedures. Given the similarities between the Northern Irish arrangement and the European Union’s procedures allowing the suspension of member states in the European Council, as well as its partially consociational features, the article also stresses the question whether the experience of Northern Ireland can offer any lessons for proponents of militant democracy in the EU. In the latter regard, the analysis suggests that the consociational experience can prove the most useful concerning the articulation of norms and arrangements on the arbitrational bodies. Nevertheless, this explorative comparative research also invites further contributions to this field of research, especially on the contextual analysis of individual cases.

All Talk, Not Enough Action: Civic Engagement in U.S. Entertainment TV at a Time of Crisis

ABSTRACT This study examines what young adults (aged 18–34) observe and learn about U.S. government leaders and civic engagement through 141 of the country’s most-watched entertainment television programs for their age group. Based on a content analysis of 658 episodes of entertainment television, it interrogates the demographics and actions of politicians and government leaders portrayed on the show, along with any civic action and conversation undertaken by everyday characters not in civic leadership positions. With important implications for both scholars of civic and political communication and entertainment media, as well as media practitioners who wish to understand the cultural importance of their work, this study reveals how the portrait of civic leadership and life offered to young people by the most-watched television programs provides a potentially harmful and uninspiring portrait of democracy in action.

Engaging in Postconflict Violence: Militant Trajectories of Young Republican Paramilitaries in Northern Ireland

This article is based on an ethnographic study of young activists in Irish republican paramilitary organizations opposed to the Good Friday Agreement. It focuses on analyzing these youth’s trajectories as militants in order to understand the process of generational renewal within armed organizations as conflicts come to an end. The specificity of their trajectories is captured through a comparison with nonviolent young republican activists. This approach shows that, despite their different party affiliations, young postwar republican activists share the same sociological profiles, motivations for engagement and daily militant practices. In other words, the article highlights that although republican paramilitary networks claim to be violent actors, they have adopted nonviolent practices as a mode of ordinary and routine action. As a result, these networks are subject to a relative pacification that is explained more by their recruitment methods and the participation of new young militants than by any gradual support for the peace agreement.

Procedural containment vs. substantive entrenchment: two early models of militant democracy

ABSTRACT German lawyer and political scientist Karl Loewenstein is generally regarded as the originator of the militant democracy paradigm. In a series of articles in the mid and late 1930s, he argued that constitutional democracies should pre-emptively defend themselves against movements and parties that were seeking to undermine them. More recently, another father of the paradigm has been identified in the controversial figure of Carl Schmitt. Before his despicable and opportunistic support for the Nazi regime at the end of 1933, he advocated a model of authoritarian democracy based on fundamental constitutional contents that should be made impervious to legislative change. This article examines the different models of disciplined and authoritarian democracy proposed by these authors. While both advocated measures that could inhibit the activity of parliamentary majorities composed mainly of parties opposed to the state constitutional structure, Schmitt, more than Loewenstein, made the point that the defence of democracy requires subscribing to substantive values and principles and entrenching them. The juxtaposition of these models makes it clear that militant democracy not only recommends the protection of certain procedures but also entails a normative standard comprising substantive contents. This helps to highlight the unstated normative burdens of democratic militancy.

Digital Media and Religious Sentiments in Malaysia: Critical Discourse Analysis of Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party and Democratic Action Party Cyberspace Campaigns in the 15th General Election

Digital Media and Religious Sentiments in Malaysia: Critical Discourse Analysis of Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party and Democratic Action Party Cyberspace Campaigns in the 15th General Election

When Freedom of Speech and Neofeudalistic Buzzers Collide: A Note for the Politics of Citizenship

The term “buzzer” was initially employed in business marketing to promote a product or service by initiating a broader discourse and increasing popularity and sales. However, the function of buzzers has evolved from business to politics, where they are utilized by politicians for political campaigns and maintaining power. This article endeavors to propose a novel concept for contemporary Indonesian political buzzers. The new concept is introduced with the term “Neofeudalistic Buzzers.” The term “Neofeudalistic” is derived from the characteristics of the actions of political buzzers who attack critics of the government and its officials, which resembles the practice of feudalism in the era of precapitalism. This conceptual article has identified that the use of buzzers in Indonesian politics has become a significant propaganda tool. Furthermore, it has been found that government-supporting buzzers are often involved in intimidating government critics. The actions of government-supporting buzzers can discredit freedom of speech and create fear among people who are critical of the government. Theoretically, neofeudalistic buzzers add a new vocabulary to the politics of citizenship studies. Meanwhile, neofeudalistic buzzers can provide practical insights for policymakers and democracy activists to regulate and supervise the activities of political buzzers.

The Business of Governing Penang: Workarounds as Remedy?

The state of Penang, including city councils for island Pulau Pinang (with urban-core George Town) and mainland Seberang Perai, has negotiated at least a degree of political marginalisation since independence. Ruled previously by a secondary partner in the ruling Barisan Nasional (National Front), and since 2008, by the Democratic Action Party and its coalition partners, the economically powerful state has negotiated constrained autonomy and resources. While to some extent, these governing challenges are common to all states in Malaysia's highly centralised federation, in other ways, they reflect Penang's specific political position. Penang's leadership has sought in particular ways to circumvent inertia or divided loyalties among bureaucrats from the federal, rather than a state-level, civil service. Central to that solution has been reliance on an array of state government-linked corporations, facilitating administration, but at possible cost to clear accountability, transparency, and promised empowerment of civil society.

Democracy: constrained or militant? Carl Schmitt and Karl Loewenstein on what it means to defend the constitution

ABSTRACT In the recent literature on militant democracy, two claims are made on the relation between its most famous advocate, Karl Loewenstein, and German jurist Carl Schmitt. The first claim is that, although the latter came to support the Nazi regime, in the late 1920s he provided an early model of militant democracy that looks more robust and elaborated than Loewenstein’s. Schmitt’s constrained democracy is believed to cut deeper into that which militancy is supposed to safeguard. The second claim is that this latter model underlies other versions of militant democracy, including Loewenstein’s. This article argues that the first claim is largely correct while the second is to be rejected. In doing so, it delves deep into Schmitt’s understanding of the materiality of law, that is, the social normativity that he believed the constitution was designed to protect, and casts light on the procedural orientation of Loewenstein’s militant democracy. The conclusion is that both these theories espouse a form of conservatism, though different from one another, and that in different ways both can be detrimental to democracy.

Militant Democracy Unmoored? The Limits of Constitutional Analogy in International Law

Abstract As constitutional democracies are faced with authoritarianism and other anti-constitutionalist threats, international law is seeing its own challenge from the increasing influence of authoritarian states. Yet, departing from the recent tendency to model the international legal order after constitutional governance, international lawyers seem to show little interest in the concept of militant democracy, while the latter lies at the centre of current debates surrounding constitutional self-defence. This article aims to bring to light the current limits of constitutional analogy in international law through an investigation into the discrepancy between constitutional and international lawyers in responding to authoritarian co-optation. A three-pronged argument is submitted. First, in contrast to other appeals for constitutional self-defence, the concept of militant democracy is contentious where it stands in tension with the constitutional ethos. Second, while militant democracy as a constitutional concept presupposes a democratic and normative version of constitutional ordering, the absence of militant democracy on the international plane betrays the non-democratic, albeit representative, character of the international legal order. Third, attempts to internationalize the concept of militant democracy should be rejected as an international version of militant democracy would only portend an (un)holy alliance of militant democracies and exacerbate the political division in international society. It is suggested that, from out of a realignment of international law with the constitutional project of progress, a new constitutional analogy may emerge, giving fresh impetus to the realization of international law’s universal liberating promise.

Democracy, Undeluded?

ABSTRACT This article critically examines Busk's Democracy in Spite of the Demos, which critiques the “categorical imperative of democracy.” Although Busk effectively challenges the commitment to value-neutral democratic procedures as the foundation for legitimate law, his alternative, curtailing powerful interests ability to manipulate voters using “socially necessary delusions,” risks establishing elite rule. This article instead proposes basic liberal rights as the normative foundation for legitimate public order and militant democracy as its most effective institutional safeguard, arguing that this combination better realizes human emancipation.

Exploring the Paradox of Hope and Ambivalence in Short-lived Japanese Colonialism in Indonesia

Unlike the European colonial powers that sought long-term political control and resource exploitation, Japan's colonial ambitions in Southeast Asia primarily emerged during the period of World War II driven by its imperial expansionist goals. The unique nature of Japan's colonial history in Southeast Asia deserves further in-depth research and analysis. This paper explores Japan's colonial policies, highlighting the exploitative nature of its colonial economy and its imperialistic character. While Japan portrayed itself as a liberator and unifier of Asia, opposing Western imperialism, its colonial rule in Southeast Asia, including Indonesia, often involved varying degrees of exploitation, coercion, and brutal repression. Furthermore, this paper argues for an understanding of the complex role that this colonial process played in shaping Indonesia's development trajectory. The analysis explores the impact of Japanese colonialism on Indonesia from various angles, including national consciousness, economy, and cultural dissemination. Additionally, it examines the intricate interactions between Japanese colonial authorities and the Indonesian government, people, and democratic activists, which eventually fueled the independence movement in Indonesia.

Secession, Right to Decide and the Constitutional Model of Militant Democracy

Advocating democracy and the right to decide over forceful union in the Spanish and European contexts, this paper makes modest theoretical proposals to protect the right to decide and to self-government of sub-state nations or peoples. The peaceful solution of conflicts involving contested claims over territory and national sovereignty calls for a pluralist concept of democracy, recovering the centrality of self-determination as the self-assertion of a people, a political community that has been systematically denied the freedom to decide on its own political status and aspiration. Constitutional law based on popular sovereignty often neglects the question of the definition of the demos as the prefigured and axiomatic constituency. If the Constitution is further interpreted as precluding any claim to self-determination by a constituency, and any debate about that claim then an undemocratic model of militant constitutionalism ensues. That militant scheme is not so much about protecting democracy as it is about imposing a national model, a pre-defined demos. This contribution seeks to revisit the claim of sovereignty of the Catalan process and the constitutional doctrine of the Spanish judiciary precluding the Catalan Parliament from engaging in political debates on the right to decide, in relation to the issue of the militant democracy model

False Conscience: Sustainability and Smart Evolution—Between Law and Power

The contribution describes the legal phenomenon as a playing field characterized by a progressive regression of the law, understood as a sovereign will from top to bottom, both in the vision of formalist legal positivisms in continental Europe and in realist terms, in the United States. Soft law represents the main strategy to subordinate the law to the interests of the economy, elasticizing environmental law, making it favorable to the market, reducing ecology to the simplistic metric of CO2 emissions. The consequence is a retreat of the statist vertical normativity of law which is not replaced by a de facto power granted to those who control the technology, built by design to close spaces for pluralism and democratic action, in the interest of surveillance and concentrated power in private and government oligopolies. The author concludes by advocating the urgency for genuinely innovative categories, particularly in the legal education, such as the commons, capable of including sustainability into a “new ecological jurisprudence committed to inclusion and solidarity rather than exclusion and struggle”.

The Democratic Self-Defence of Constitutional Courts

Abstract Courts around the world are under attack. They are being captured, packed, threatened, and their authority and powers are being limited by governments that seek to undermine the democratic constitutional order. Once courts are weakened or captured, it is easier for these governments to undermine other democratic institutions and even set courts themselves against democracy. Accordingly, using the rationale of ‘militant democracy’, this article proposes the theory of democratic self-defence of constitutional courts. According to this theory, constitutional courts (including apex courts with constitutional review powers) should declare the unconstitutionality of reforms to their institutional design when these are instrumental to a process of democratic decay. Not only that they should do so, but they must do so – as a duty – when the viability of the democratic system of government is at stake. The aim of this self-defence is not the self-interest preservation of institutional powers but the protection of democracy itself. In order to be able to protect democracy, courts must be able to protect themselves.

Pakatan Harapan’s Performance in the 2021 Sarawak State Election

This article aims to examine the performance of Pakatan Harapan (PH) in the 2021 Sarawak State Election (SSE21). It explains the three main reasons for PH’s dismal showing. First, local-based political parties took advantage of structural weaknesses in Sarawak PH and managed to convince Sarawakians that state rights could only be protected by political entities controlled by Sarawak leaders. Second, the “Sarawak First” sentiment changed the political landscape of Sarawak and increased the sense of solidarity among Sarawakians. It was the driving force behind the campaign messages of the local-based political parties that resonated well among the majority of the Sarawakian voters. Third, the three PH coalition parties in Sarawak, namely Democratic Action Party (DAP), Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) and Parti Amanah Negara (AMANAH) did not have a common political ideology to bind them together, strengthening the common belief that DAP, PKR and AMANAH came together simply out of convenience to gain power. In order to survive in Sarawak, PH needs to rebuild its image and political strategies relevant to the needs of the Sarawakians voters. This article is based on data from online media sources and observations made during the election on 18 December 2021.

Democracy, Acquiescence, and Machiavelli’s La Mandragola

The “democratic turn” in the scholarship on Niccolò Machiavelli has yet to consider the personal qualities or traits that sustain collective action and facilitate the plural interests of a majority. Should democratic actors adopt princely virtù, or does Machiavelli’s corpus offer traits more suitable for democratic politics? This essay interprets Machiavelli’s comedy, La Mandragola, to show how his characterization of the oft-neglected priest, Brother Timoteo, positions acquiescence as a uniquely democratic trait. An analysis of Timoteo’s three soliloquies traces how his initial princely behavior transforms into acquiescence, and how this trait serves the interests of all characters, including Timoteo’s own abiding interest in the reputation of his institution and collective action. This interpretation enriches our understanding of Machiavelli’s democratic thought and challenges us to rethink the role acquiescence may play in contemporary politics.

Co-producing AIED Ethics Under Lockdown: an Empirical Study of Deliberative Democracy in Action

It is widely documented that higher education institutional responses to the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated not only the adoption of educational technologies, but also associated socio-technical controversies. Critically, while these cloud-based platforms are capturing huge datasets, and generating new kinds of learning analytics, there are few strongly theorised, empirically validated processes for institutions to consult their communities about the ethics of this data-intensive, increasingly algorithmically-powered infrastructure. Conceptual and empirical contributions to this challenge are made in this paper, as we focus on the under-theorised and under-investigated phase required for ethics implementation, namely, joint agreement on ethical principles. We foreground the potential of ethical co-production through Deliberative Democracy (DD), which emerged in response to the crisis in confidence in how typical democratic systems engage citizens in decision making. This is tested empirically in the context of a university-wide DD consultation, conducted under pandemic lockdown conditions, co-producing a set of ethical principles to govern Analytics/AI-enabled Educational Technology (AAI-EdTech). Evaluation of this process takes the form of interviews conducted with students, educators, and leaders. Findings highlight that this methodology facilitated a unique and structured co-production process, enabling a range of higher education stakeholders to integrate their situated knowledge through dialogue. The DD process and product cultivated commitment and trust among the participants, informing a new university AI governance policy. The concluding discussion reflects on DD as an exemplar of ethical co-production, identifying new research avenues to advance this work. To our knowledge, this is the first application of DD for AI ethics, as is its use as an organisational sensemaking process in education.

When something is happening but you don’t know what it is: mood and agency after a stolen election

AbstractThe street protests in Belarus following an allegedly stolen election provide a context for an examination of the expression of public mood. We argue that political moods involve pre-agentic intuition rather than cognitively formed agency; and that they constitute a vital, too often overlooked stage of democratic action. Focusing upon such moments entails an understanding of the ways in which early impressions of situations often rely upon peripheral awareness and pre-reflective heuristics. Understanding pre-agentic action poses a significant methodological challenge to researchers who must determine how best to make sense of human responses to situations that do not yet make sense to them. The article explores the transition from mood to agency; that is to say, from generalised affective feeling to political intention and action. We looked through thousands of photographs, video clips, textual messages, voices, smartphone screens, maps and official documents that circulated online during the Belarusian protests both prior to and after the election.

Danish citizenship: A gift you should not take for granted

For the hawks in the Danish debate on naturalization, Danish citizenship is not a human right or something that you can earn by living up to a specific set of criteria. Rather, it is something that members of parliament bestow on foreigners as a benevolent act, if the members are convinced that the foreigners are genuinely committed to Danish values and do not constitute a threat to democracy. In the hawks’ view, the members of parliament are sovereign and should be able to suspend all principles in the defense of democracy and liberal rights. Thereby the hawks repeat the dilemma of militant democracy: Does the defense of democracy turn democracy into its opposite?

Australia and the Ukraine crisis: deterring authoritarian expansionism

This paper seeks to explain Australia’s reaction to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and how it has affected Australia’s strategic decisions in responding to Chinese aggression in the Indo-Pacific. Canberra’s responses are consistent with the ‘dependent ally’ and the ‘middle power’ traditions in Australian foreign policy. The paper argues that these responses are framed by assessments that a competition and struggle between a democratic and authoritarian bloc is occurring; authoritarian values and approaches are key causes of instability and disruption to the post-World War II liberal rules-based order; and should Moscow achieve its objectives in Ukraine and beyond, there is an increased possibility that Beijing will be tempted to use similar coercive measures against Taiwan and other nations. Canberra is consequently putting even more emphasis on the US-Australia alliance, and groupings such as AUKUS and the Quad as central to collective democratic action to constrain and deter contrary authoritarian behaviours in the Indo- Pacific.