Suteu, Silvia;
(2024)
Eternity Clauses and Electoral Democracy.
In: Ginsburg, Tom and Huq, Aziz and Khaitan, Tarunabh, (eds.)
The Entrenchment of Democracy: The Comparative Constitutional Design of Elections, Parties, and Voting.
(pp. 222-243).
Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, UK.
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Abstract
This chapter explores the link between eternity clauses and electoral democracy by looking at two instances of unamendable democracy: party bans, both direct and indirect, and the protection of parliamentary mandates. These two approaches are illustrated via a range of case studies: the ban of anti-democratic parties in Germany; bans of ethnic, separatist, and religious parties in Turkey; indirect unamendability and its chilling effect on party competition in Israel; and the judicial protection of parliamentary mandates as unamendable in Czechia. Whereas such measures are adopted in the name of protecting democracy, the analysis here indicates that courts will not always strike the right balance between safeguarding and unduly narrowing democratic commitments. In some cases, they may even unintentionally undermine multipartyism itself or significantly influence electoral outcomes. Thus, the bluntness and open-ended nature of unamendability risks having a chilling effect on electoral democracy in both fragile and more stable democratic contexts.
| Type: | Book chapter |
|---|---|
| Title: | Eternity Clauses and Electoral Democracy |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1017/9781009447713.015 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009447713.015 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Creative Common License - CC Creative Common License - BY Creative Common License - NC This content is Open Access and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence CC-BY-NC 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/creativelicenses |
| Keywords: | unamendability eternity clauses electoral politics militant democracy party bans, parliamentary mandates, Germany, Turkey, Israel, Czechia |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of Laws |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10173574 |
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