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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?

For strammerne i diskussionen om tildeling af dansk statsborgerskab er statsborgerskabet ikke en menneskeret eller noget, man kan gøre sig berettiget til ved at indfri et bestemt sæt af krav. Det er en gave eller et privilegium, som tildeles udlændinge på baggrund af folketingsmedlemmernes gode vilje, hvis og når sidstnævnte føler sig overbeviste om, at førstnævnte genuint bekender sig til de danske værdier og ikke udgør en trussel for demokratiet. I forsvaret for demokratiet og de liberale frihedsrettigheder skal lovgiverne kunne agere suverænt og suspendere alle principper. Derved gentager strammernes position det militante demokratis dilemma: Transformerer forsvaret af demokratiet det til dets modsatte?

The reaction against non-western immigrants and especially Muslims has been analysed both in terms of an exclusionary civic nationalism and in terms of an assertive liberalism. Similar to exclusionary civic nationalism, assertive liberalism purports to defend liberal democratic principles and society against illiberal principles and forces predominantly represented by Muslims. This article argues that nationalism and liberalism are analytically distinguishable but difficult to disentangle empirically. It contends that a more detailed analysis of assertive liberalism can be obtained by subdividing it into four categories of liberal intolerance and demonstrates this by analysing six national debates on the accommodation of cultural and religious diversity in education. The analysis indicates that the nature of liberal intolerance understood as the combination of the four categories of liberal intolerance varies with the state tradition regarding religious neutrality of public institutions and the type of welfare state, but also that many liberal arguments for and against accommodation repeat themselves across national contexts.

This article evaluates a decentralized Danish model for dealing with cultural and religious diversity at individual schools. This evaluation is based upon normative theories of toleration, recognition and domination and examines whether the model implies compromise with the (liberal) educational values stipulated in the national legislation. The model, reconstructed from government publications, is based on reaching accommodation through dialogue between school staff and parents/students, with the pragmatic aim of facilitating the participation of students in everyday school activities. The model is noteworthy because it appears to break with the widespread 'retreat from multiculturalism' predicated on the defence of liberal values, and because properly dealing with diversity at schools is important for ensuring students' well-being and academic success.

AbstractThe reaction against non‐western immigrants and especially Muslims has been analysed both in terms of an exclusionary civic nationalism and in terms of an assertive liberalism. Similar to exclusionary civic nationalism, assertive liberalism purports to defend liberal democratic principles and society against illiberal principles and forces predominantly represented by Muslims. This article argues that nationalism and liberalism are analytically distinguishable but difficult to disentangle empirically. It contends that a more detailed analysis of assertive liberalism can be obtained by subdividing it into four categories of liberal intolerance and demonstrates this by analysing six national debates on the accommodation of cultural and religious diversity in education. The analysis indicates that the nature of liberal intolerance understood as the combination of the four categories of liberal intolerance varies with the state tradition regarding religious neutrality of public institutions and the type of welfare state, but also that many liberal arguments for and against accommodation repeat themselves across national contexts.

The Danish free school tradition has entailed a large degree of associational freedom for non-governmental schools, religious as well as non-religious. Until the late 1990s, the non-governmental schools were under no strict ideological or pedagogical limitations, they could recruit teachers and students according to their own value base, and were given a large state subsidy. From the late 1990s a number of legislative changes were introduced demanding that non-governmental schools provide civic education and document the academic value of their teaching programs. The rules concerning the monitoring of schools were also changed. This article analyses the political justification for these changes and asks to what extent the changes have altered the Danish free school tradition.

In the age of migration, the inclusion of immigrants in national politics is crucial for democratic reasons, and because it increases the coordination and cooperation ability of society. The informal norms, values and beliefs of the political culture are one aspect of the institutional and discursive opportunity structures immigrants face as ethnic and religious minorities. This article analyses the Danish political culture with regard to the potential barriers it has for the inclusion of immigrants in national political life. It finds that the predominantly liberal, secular and republican character of the Danish political culture excludes certain kinds of cultural and religious identities and interests at the symbolic discursive level, while Danish political culture may in fact provide more openness at the practical and institutional level. However, the question of whether or not Danish political culture is able to deal adequately with cultural and religious diversity remains.

Abstract
The essential role of parties in democracies makes it important to keep them democratic. This article argues for sortition-based citizens' assemblies (CAs) organized in and by civil society to formulate democratic standards for political parties to follow, to evaluate them individually and to criticize them publicly if they do not. This is a third and potentially complementary way to keeping parties democratic, placed between militant democracy on the one hand and citizen vigilantism on the other. Militant democracy is challenged by the fact that few democratically problematic parties are ostensibly anti-democratic and therefore likely to fall under the legal criteria for issuing party bans and other legal sanctions. Militant democratic measures are also likely to be ineffective and are vulnerable to abuse. Citizen vigilantism, whereby active democratic citizens take on the responsibility for protecting democracy, deals better with the ambiguous nature of democratically problematic parties but suffers from a lack of democratic authorization and clear standards of critique. While not perfect, the proposed model remedies many of the shortcomings of both approaches. Contributing to an emerging literature on CAs as instruments in the protection of democracy, the article evaluates the model's normative justifiability, feasibility and likely effectiveness.