FLASH
Shkruar nga Luca Ricolfi
For regimes like Russia after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the term democracy has sometimes been used, which highlights the coexistence between dictatorship (full executive powers) and periodic elections of parliament and head of government.
What is a democracy? What about a dictatorship? Until a few decades ago, this type of question did not pose major conceptual difficulties. It is true that, alongside true democracies and dictatorships, there existed intermediate or hybrid regimes that could not be classified directly into the two ideal types of political regimes.
Institutions that monitor the state of democracy have often predicted intermediate, mixed, or hybrid cases. Political scholars have often used neologisms and compound terms to identify regimes that, being a mixture of the two pure types, cannot be considered either fully democratic or fully dictatorial.
For example, for regimes like Russia after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the term democracy has sometimes been used, which highlights the coexistence between dictatorship (full executive powers) and periodic elections of parliament and head of government.
In the past, some have gone so far as to coin the speculative term dictabranda to emphasize that an autocratic government, without alternation in power, can still accept some basic civil liberties (the archetype of this regime is Mexico after the 1929 crisis, where the Institutional Revolutionary Party ruled for 71 years without suppressing all civil liberties).
But the case that worries us most as Europeans is that of illiberal democracies, as opposed to true democracies, or liberal democracies. The term illiberal democracy, almost always used with a negative connotation, refers to those regimes in which popular sovereignty, implemented through periodic and free elections, creates governments endowed with excessive or poorly exercised power.
And where the deficit of liberalism can manifest itself in completely different ways: the subordination of the judiciary to political power, the absence or weakness of counter-powers, restrictive laws on freedom of the media, of associations, of expression of opinion, the lack of recognition of minority rights, etc.
In Europe, three countries in particular have been the subject of criticism: Hungary under Viktor Orbán, Poland under Mateusz Morawiecki, and Austria under Jörg Haider. In all three cases, according to European authorities, political power, despite its democratic investment, has gone beyond its legitimate powers, circumventing the constraints imposed by the rule of law.
In general terms, this was the situation until a few months ago. Not anymore. If we want to make a minimally accurate description of possible political and institutional regimes today, we must consider a new possibility.
In three European countries - Germany, France, Romania - a situation is emerging that, in a way, reverses the cause of illiberal democracies: that of a democracy in which respect (real or supposed) for the rule of law entails a dramatic limitation of democracy.
This opportunity arose in France, with a court ruling that declared Marine Le Pen, the leader of France's main party and the front-runner for the presidency, unfit to run for public office.
Then in Germany with a secret service investigation into the largest German party (AfD, Alternative für Deutschland), which questioned its right to receive public funds, and perhaps even to compete in elections.
But also in Romania, where the presidential elections were annulled because the Constitutional Court found that support for one candidate had been aided by Russian propaganda. In all three cases, the political forces penalized are those of the right wing, more or less extreme and more or less nostalgic.
And in all three cases, those who intervened in the process were the bodies responsible for implementing the law (the judiciary, the Constitutional Court, the secret services). Here I do not want to discuss the appropriateness or otherwise of excluding certain parties or candidates from the electoral race, as they are being described as antidemocratic.
A very complicated question, which inevitably gets the blood boiling. But what I want to emphasize is that on a logical level, this story is the exact opposite of that of illiberal democracies. In that case, these were imperfect democracies because they sacrificed the rule of law.
Here, if certain political forces are banned, it is the rule of law, which prevails over democracy. How should we call these types of new democracies? For me, the appropriate term seems to be “limited democracies,” because the moment the political force with the greatest consensus is excluded, what is undermined at its root is precisely the essence of democracy, namely the principle of popular sovereignty.
As for the question of which is the greater evil, illiberal democracy or limited democracy, everyone has their own opinion. What I want to emphasize is just one argument: if the principle of excluding political forces judged as “antidemocratic” were established where it has already appeared (in Germany, France, Romania), in the countries with “limited democracy”, there would be almost 200 million citizens or a little less than half of those in the entire European Union. Not a good calling card for an institution that likes to call itself a beacon of freedom and democracy./ Adapted from “Pamfleti” by “Il Messaggero”
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