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Historical institutionalist theories of endogenous change have enhanced our understanding of institutional development by providing a theoretical vocabulary for analyzing how institutions may be renegotiated over the long run by social and political actors. In these theories, however, the causal impact of institutions themselves on political outcomes, including their own change and reform, is less developed—a significant problem for an institutional research program. This article addresses this problem by proposing strategies that integrate historical institutionalism's insights into endogenous institutional change with a systematic analysis of the institutional conditions under which "bottom-up" processes of gradual change are likely to be counteracted. In particular, the institutionalization of cultural categories and the allocation of power over the timing of reform within institutional and policy configurations are important variables for understanding how preexisting institutions may enable institutional incumbents to channel, delay, or prevent institutional change altogether.

The legitimacy claims of liberal democratic states are typically couched in the
language of individual rights and the rule of law. But contemporary liberal
democratic states increasingly appeal to a logic of security, law and order, and
the need to combat "political extremism." This logic plays
out in Ukraine, Egypt, and Turkey, and in Greece and Germany, but also in the
U.S., France, and the UK. It is an increasingly important feature of politics in
societies that may be experiencing a rough "transition to
democracy," but also in societies that are conventionally regarded as
"consolidated democracies." The normative and practical
challenges presented by this situation are fundamental. Alexander S.
Kirschner's A Theory of Militant Democracy: The Ethics of Combatting
Political Extremism offers one interesting take on these issues, which cut to
the core of political science as a discipline. We have thus invited a range of
political scientists from a variety of subfield and methodological perspectives
to comment on the book and on the broader topic the book engages—the
ethics of combatting political extremism and indeed the very political
construction of "political extremism." -- Jeffrey C.
Isaac

Many years after its emergence in the vocabulary of comparative politics, the label of 'anti-system' is still one of the most used to describe a party or group that exerts a radical form of opposition. However, the term has been used in an increasingly idiosyncratic manner, which makes it inappropriate for comparative research. The origins of the concept reside in the writings of Sartori on party systems in the 1960s and 1970s, where it mainly referred to the totalitarian parties of the inter-war and post-war decades. Since its inception, however, the concept of an anti-system party has not only been used in party system analysis, but also in the context of empirical studies of various aspects of the life of democratic regimes, to indicate challenges to its stability, legitimacy or, more recently, consolidation. This article reconstructs the concept of 'anti-systemness' by disentangling its different empirical referents in party system theory and in the empirical analysis of democracy, and proposes a more refined typology of 'anti-system parties'.

Abstract. While the strategies of political actors and institutions have been largely analyzed with reference to cases of democratic breakdown, democratic survival has often been viewed as a consequence of socio–economic and cultural 'preconditions'. The analysis of successful reactions to strong extremist challenges in three cases of democratic survival (Czechoslovakia, Finland and Belgium in the inter–war period) against the background of two cases of breakdown in the same historical context (Italy and the Weimar Republic) is a useful complement to this view. The analysis of the selected cases shows how a stable coalition of democratic forces can effectively protect the democratic system from dangerous extremist attacks by pursuing both repressive and inclusive strategies.

While the strategies of political actors and institutions have been largely analyzed with reference to cases of democratic breakdown, democratic survival has often been viewed as a consequence of socio-economic and cultural 'preconditions'. The analysis of successful reactions to strong extremist challenges in three cases of democratic survival (Czechoslovakia, Finland and Belgium in the inter-war period) against the background of two cases of break-down in the same historical context (Italy and the Weimar Republic) is a useful complement to this view. The analysis of the selected cases shows how a stable coalition of democratic forces can effectively protect the democratic system from dangerous extremist attacks by pursuing both repressive and inclusive strategies. (European Journal of Political Research / FUB)

Digitised version produced by the EUI Library and made available online in 2020.