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Civil Democracy Protection is an overview of attempts by organisations to oppose groups that are perceived to threaten democracy.
The book traces the history of civil democracy protection actors from the establishment of democratic constitutional states up to the present day and develops a set of systematic and comparative approaches. The central question it explores is: What significance do civil actors have for the establishment and consolidation of democratic constitutional states, especially in relation to the protection of democracy by state institutions? The volume includes contributions from historians and social scientists, who combine idiographic approaches that focus on the specifics of individual cases with nomothetic approaches that aim to provide generalisable insights, incorporating historical experiences from various European countries and the USA in the 20th and early 21st century.
This book will be of interest to scholars of democracy protection, civil society, consolidation of democracy, and anti- extremism.
The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 International license.
List of contents
Introduction PART I: Historical forerunners 1. On the creation, destruction, and reformation of democratic protectionism: Human rights leagues in France and Germany 2. The Reichsbanner Black-Red-Gold - Militant democrats in the Weimar Republic 3. University in an emergency? Transnational networks of professors' counterprotest against the student movement of 1968 4. The Role of the Anti-Defamation League in combating extremism PART II: Country reports 5. Germany: Promoting democratic values - Political foundations as actors of civil democracy protection 6. Austria: "Protecting democracy" in the context of an established far-right Lager. Counterprotest against a far-right ball 7. Netherlands: Civil democracy protection and anti-extremist organisations 8. Belgium: Civil society and the protection of democracy: The case of Flanders 9. France: Civil society and the protection of democracy 10. England: Challenging the breeding ground for extremism and terrorism: Conservative governments' programmes to strengthen democracy since 2010 PART III: Comparative studies 11. Transnational cooperation between anti-extremist civil society organisations in Europe 12. Civil democracy protection in (East) Germany - perspectives from the field 13. Success conditions of civil democracy organisations to protect democracy
About the author
Uwe Backes is Deputy Director at the Hannah Arendt Institute for Totalitarianism Studies and Professor of Political Science at the TUD (Dresden University of Technology). His research focuses on extremism, democracy, and autocratic rule.
Thomas Lindenberger is Director at the Hannah Arendt Institute for Totalitarianism Studies and Professor for Totalitarianism Research at the TUD (Dresden University of Technology). His research focuses on the comparative contemporary history of Germany and Europe and the history of communism and postcommunist transformation.
Summary
Civil Democracy Protection is an overview of attempts by organisations to oppose groups that are perceived to threaten democracy.
