Comments on: Rosenblum on Banning Parties

By: Brett Bellmore

Brett Bellmore — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 18:36:55 +0000

I’m opposed to banning parties, as much out of the belief that if it’s permitted, it will be abused, (The choice of which parties to ban will be made by members of other parties; It’s like letting any business decide which of it’s competitors will be shut down.) as from the notion that it’s a bad thing to do even if done right.

However, I think the notion that Communist parties are in any signicant sense less offensive than Nazi parties says more about the Pollyannish attitude of Western liberals towards communism, than it does about those parties, which are harmless under the exact same circumstances as Nazi parties are: Only when they’re powerless.

Communists have murdered hellishly more people than Nazis ever did.

By: Geoff Robinson

Geoff Robinson — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 05:06:04 +0000

The Democrats were allowed to contest the 1864 US elections during the Civil War. Perhaps Lincoln would’t have read Carl Schmitt even if he could have

By: Dave

Dave — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 08:46:42 +0000

@34: Defending democracy, whether the people likes it or not, eh? I mean, what’s the disenfranchisement of one-in-twenty of the voting population compared to the risk of a party with 5% support sullying our perfect public sphere? A small price to pay…

By: mpowell

mpowell — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 15:50:41 +0000

I think people are wrong to say that banning a party will have no effect. Membership recruitment will obviously be negatively effected. It’s not as if the population is endowed with a fixed set of unchangeable beliefs. In fact, many members of the population are incredibly uniformed and can potentially be dramatically influenced in their opinion one way or another. You might argue that banning a party may have a reverse impact on it’s popularity, but this is where the need to nip things in the bud comes from. I think that once they get to a certain size, you risk a certain amount of backlash by doing so. When they are just a sliver (5% say), you might do better by shutting down their opportunities for persuasive political speech.

By: JoB

JoB — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 11:31:14 +0000

Dave-31,

there is nothing to stop them re-forming under a different label, changing the wording of their manifesto slightly, and carrying on

Nothing unless ‘they’ (as persons) have committed crimes and lost their political rights .

But, more importantly, your nothing is not quite nothing: their wording is the evidence against them so changing it is changing a vital component. This is what in actual fact happened here in Belgium with the extreme right Vlaams Blok &, whatever the merits of the case: the verdict has had real consequences.

Obviously changing the wording is ‘nothing’ in the context of an organization going for violence, but in such cases other elements of the law will kick in (& back to my opening statement).

Thus my question: what else should they change if not their wording?

By: Ciarán

Ciarán — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 10:08:48 +0000

I'm with Keir on Sinn Féin: it's a bit much to call not taking your seat on this principle an effective ban. But there may be something else important about Sinn Féin. That is, that the long negotiations prior to their signing up to the Mitchell Principles involved in part a two-way negotiation on the limits of acceptability in the UK/NI democratic system. Maybe bans can sometimes work in the same way. I'm stretching here, and am a total ignoramus so am happy to be told so, but Turkey's AK Party might have undergone the same journey with the Turkish state's blockholders, with a party banned then resurrected under a more moderate guise. I'm not saying it's a good thing and am certainly not suggesting that that's what's going on in Israel, but maybe these are instances of the nutter element in a particular circumstance figuring out, along with the non-nutters, where the bounds of acceptability lie in a particular circumstance. In which case, banning may in some circumstances not be about absolute disenfranchisement.

By: Dave

Dave — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 09:30:15 +0000

In a reasonably free society, leaving those terms commonsensical for the moment, banning a specified political organisation is surely fairly futile. Unless you suppress the membership in some fashion – only possible under ‘reasonable freedom’ if you can convict them of actual crimes – there is nothing to stop them re-forming under a different label, changing the wording of their manifesto slightly, and carrying on. Until the next ban, and the next, ad infinitum – at which point it is little more than political theatre at one level, and a deliberate and persistent effort to antagonise the supporters of the parties in question at another – which second element cannot be good for ‘democracy’ per se. Yes, you stop them getting parliamentary representation, which I can understand in the Israeli case, with its absolutist PR system, is important for the advocates of banning, but you build hostility without offering conciliation. Not that that seems to bother many people in that neck of the woods.

By: Keir

Keir — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 03:46:54 +0000

In effect, Sinn Fein is banned.

That’s wrong—Sinn Fein isn’t banned at all; Sinn Fein has a policy of not taking their seats or the oath.

The oath has no actual power, so the point for SF is political. SF still function as a political party elsewhere, as at Stormont.

Labour’s got a bunch of republicans, and they swear the oath; it’s meaningless.

(This is quite important, because some Republican organisations are actually banned in the UK; SF is not one of them.)

By: Joe S.

Joe S. — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 03:34:40 +0000

I think that too much of this thread assumes a kind of American Constitutionalism, dominated by legal reasoning and the kinds of categorizations that hold up to legal (or political theoretical) analysis. The US is a First Amendment country (both speech and religion): few others are. But this doesn’t mean that free speech or free exercise fare better in the US than in other countries.

I would rather have a polity that instinctively flinches from certain kinds of piggishness and meanness than any principles for banning parties. The principles (unless absolutist) rely on facts; facts are manipulable; courts know this. And even absolutist principles don’t mean all that much. The US First Amendment speech jurisprudence is tolerably absolutist, but Al Jazeera, despite having boatloads of money, has no speech in America.

By: Tom T.

Tom T. — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 03:26:53 +0000

The Nazi Party—or the KKK, which at times in the US past has essentially been a political party—could be banned on the grounds that their party platforms advocated the physical removal of certain groups of citizens from the polity.

Note that this was Abraham Lincoln’s preferred policy for quite some time, vis-a-vis freed slaves and Liberia.

By: Zack

Zack — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 03:16:53 +0000

I don’t know if Zack thinks eliminationism is within the pale of permissible speech, but I don’t.

It would depend on whether that “advocating the excision and extermination” was the direct cause of actual violence. If it’s all so much hot air, let them go on; that way it’s out in the open where sensible folk can keep an eye on it.

By: Moz

Moz — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 03:08:05 +0000

Hmm, quick list of anti-democratic problems… rank to your taste. To me, banning a party is both ineffectual and a poor approach. Use bans on hate speech and threats of violence instead, they’re more effective and more justifiable.

– partial franchise (most countries don’t let non-citizen residents vote, and have age-linked restrictions rather than performace-based ones). Israel claims and occupies territory where the residents don’t get to vote, as well as refusing to recognise the elected government of Gaza. Both are bigger problems than banning minor parties. – gerrymandering, including the UK with 3x the electors in some electorates compared to others. This amounts to a partial franchise – even if you can technically vote, your vote is worth less than your countryman’s because of it. – lack of proportional representation, including thresholds designed purely to keep minor parties out. No need to ban them, just jigger the system so they can never be elected (UK and US both do this dramatically, Germany and New Zealand less so). – unelected rulers. The queen less so than the house of lords. – the cabinet system, and whipping, both of which serve to amplify small minorities into majorities. A cabinet majority inflicts its will on the party which does the same to parliament. Result is 5-6 people “democratically” carrying the country. – states where the parliament is not the highest power. Thailand, Iraq and Fiji, for example, where “democracy” is imposed at the point of a gun and “wrong” votes are ignored. – countries where people are banned from office for having wrong views. Or being born in the wrong place. Or having been convicted of a crime. – countries where any of the above (or other arbitrary items) prevent voting – countries where parties are banned for having “wrong” views – criminalising any of the above, or support for (changing) any of them.

That list is not meant to be exhaustive, just to put into perspective the problem with banning parties.

By: Doctor Science

Doctor Science — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 02:42:48 +0000

christian h:

I can see how the whack-a-mole factor would make it seem pointless, but the real purpose is to keep the NPD from consolidating and getting too big. As I said above, once a party gets up well above 10% in support, banning it will do no good and will probably backfire—you’ve already got a dangerously large part of the population that is willing to work against democracy.

My understanding of Israeli party politics is poor, but Hadash sounds to me as though it is more democratic and less eliminationist than the mean for Israel. Its problems expose the contradiction between “a Jewish state” and “a democracy”—you can’t have any equation between any identity (ethnic, gender, linguistic, religious, “racial”) and the state and be a democracy long-term. “You build a democracy with the people you’ve got, not the people you’d let into your club”.

By: christian h.

christian h. — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 02:16:33 +0000

The NPD is an interesting case also because a ban would be utterly pointless. The party would simply be replaced either by itself with a different name (as happened when Germany banned the KPD and SRP in the fifties), or by any other of the numerous Neo-Nazi parties out there.

The value of any ban would be purely symbolic – in essence, a cheap way for the German state to show toughness against the very real dangers of fascist violence. (I’m ignoring the fact that another attempt at a ban would likely lead to a repeat of past performance, revealing that most leading members are, in fact, working for one of the numerous intelligence services…)

By: john c. halasz

john c. halasz — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 01:15:03 +0000

But Hadash wasn’t banned, (bi-national anti- Zionist party rooted in and dominated by the old CP)? At any rate, whatever sort of reactionary political frenzy Israel is in now, ( a sign of the decay of its position, to my mind, however “sucessfully” they manage to impose their regional domination), the obvious effect of such a ban on Arab-based parties is good old-fashioned gerrymandering/ voter suppression, as Arab voters are little likely to vote for any of the remaining parties, as expressing their interests and perspectives, (assuming Hadash already is at the limit of its appeal/vote share), but rather will abstain from and boycott the vote. Just as with increasingly misconceived resorts to violent force, suppression of any expression of opposing perspectives is a sign of waning legitimacy and a corresponding exhaustion of any ability for flexible responses. Perhaps Israel is at long last becoming integrated into the Middle East!