Bastiaan Rijpkema publishes Militant Democracy: The Limits of Democratic Tolerance with Routledge
The English edition of Rijpkema’s Weerbare democratie is published in Routledge’s Extremism and Democracy series, one of the leading series in the field, edited by Roger Eatwell and Matthew Goodwin.
The book presents a novel and comprehensive theory of militant democracy on the basis of democracy’s capacity for self-correction. For the Dutch edition Rijpkema was awarded the Prinsjesboekenprijs 2016, for the best political book of the year; in 2017 he won the New Scientist Science Talent Prize, for the most talented young researcher of the Netherlands and Flanders.
From the publisher’s website:
“Against the backdrop of historical and current examples, this book examines a variety of theories from philosophers and legal scholars such as Karl Loewenstein, Karl Popper and Carl Schmitt as well as contemporary alternatives. It compares their interpretations of democracy and militant democracy, discusses how helpful these references are, and introduces two largely forgotten theorists to the militant democracy debate: George van den Bergh and Milan Markovitch. Militant Democracy then sets out to build a novel theory of democratic self-defence on the basis of democracy’s capacity for self-correction. In doing so, it addresses the more classic and current criticisms of the concept, while paying specific attention to the position of the judge, the legal design and effectiveness of party bans, and the national and supranational procedural safeguards that can safeguard the careful application of militant democracy instruments.”
More information is available at the Routledge website. A preview is available on Google Books.
