Newest publication by Alex Kirshner probes militant democracy

KIE Senior Fellow Alex Kirshner (political science) has recently published A Theory of Militant Democracy: The Ethics of Combatting Political Extremism, which considers how pro-democratic forces can safeguard representative government from anti-democratic groups. By granting rights of participation to groups that do not share democratic values, democracies may endanger the very rights they have granted; but denying these rights may also undermine democratic values. New and unstable regimes often confront this difficulty and those regimes frequently end up banning significant political parties and restricting participation.

The book looks at a number of real-world examples, ranging from the far-right British Nationalist Party to Turkey’s Islamist Welfare Party to America’s Democratic Party during Reconstruction. The book also considers the relationship of militant democracy to theories of democracy, free speech, judicial review, just war, and partisanship, among others topics. Kirshner’s publication is available at Amazon and Yale.