Abstract
The End of the Party: Party Banning in Multi-Party Democracies answers the question of when political parties in democracies are successfully banned from contesting elections. In so doing, the dissertation contributes to the literature on militant democracy. Previous discussions of party banning have tended to focus on 1) the type of states which engage in party banning; 2) the types of parties targeted with party bans; or 3) the outcomes of party bans. This dissertation differs by providing a predictive explanation of when parties are successfully banned in democracies. This is important because it suggests that the answer is to be found in the decision-making institutions - the judiciary and the legislature – and therefore can provide us an indication of the strength of these institutions and their commitments to democratic values. Using cases from Israel and Germany and providing close analysis of transcripts of meetings of the legislature and Supreme Court decisions, this dissertation demonstrates that conditions which lead to party banning hold true across both time (from 1950s until present day) and space (across cases in Israel and Germany).
To frame the discussion, Chapter One provides a history of the concept of militant democracy before discussing the tactics of militant democracy, the parties typically subject to these tactics and the types of democratic states which typically employ these tactics. This chapter reveals that the discussion of party banning lacks a satisfactory analysis of when multi-party democracies successfully ban parties. To this end, Chapter Two suggests an explanation for this phenomenon – that is, that it is the institutions in charge of ban decisions which must be looked at more than party or state types. It explains the different motivations of the institutions and how these motivations influence institutional perception of cost to the institution and threat to the state. Using a framework of historical institutionalism, this dissertation argues that, unless a party represents an overt threat to the state, parties are only banned when the judiciary and the legislature independently assess that the given party presents a sufficiently high threat to the state and a sufficiently low cost to the decision-making institution. This assessment will match when there is an exogenous factor which influences how the institutions evaluate threat. Parties which meet the criteria of overt threat are understood as having an explicitly anti-democratic agenda, party structure and party activity and rhetoric. Chapter Three provides examples in Israel and in West Germany where parties were banned as a consequence of overt threat – these cases demonstrate that when faced with overt threat, cost considerations are not made by the institutions. These cases of overt threat also provided the framework for future ban decisions. Chapter Four shows that, more commonly, parties are banned when both institutions assess sufficiently low cost to their institution and sufficiently high threat of the party. Finally, using cases from Israel and Germany, Chapter Five shows the inverse – parties are not banned when the institutions evaluate cost to their institution and/or threat of the party differently.
This dissertation contributes to the literature on militant democracy and party banning by providing a comprehensive institutional explanation to demonstrate the conditions under which parties are banned in multi-party democracies.