The Mexican government broke diplomatic ties with Ecuador after the Mexican Embassy in Quito was raided on April 6, 2024, to detain Ecuador’s ex-vice-president Jorge Glas, convicted of bribery and organized crime. Both governments are facing significant stakes: Ecuador must ensure that a high-profile crime does not go unpunished, while Mexico is obligated to uphold international law and offer international protection for Jorge Glas.
As India’s new dominant party system coalesced after 2014, the country entered a phase of centralisation. India has always had federalism with a strong centre, but from the late 1980s to the mid-2010s, political and economic regionalism and national coalition governments encompassing national and regional parties produced an appearance of deepening federalisation. Since 2014, when the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) became the first party in over 25 years to win an outright parliamentary majority, the twin pillars of political centralisation under a dominant party system and economic concentration, have once again drawn attention to the contested nature of India’s federal contract.
Wenn über die wehrhafte Demokratie gestritten wird, ist der Ruf nach einer starken Zivilgesellschaft nicht fern. „Verfassungsschutz von unten“, „wehrhafte Demokratie light“, „ziviler Verfassungsschutz“, „intellectual militancy“ oder „konfliktfähige Zivilgesellschaft“ lauten die Forderungen. Fast alle Diskussionsbeiträge der laufenden Debatte haben gemeinsam, dass sie die Zivilgesellschaft in die Pflicht nehmen. Dabei ist es der Staat, der primär in die Verantwortung genommen werden muss. Sowohl Verfassungsrecht als auch Unionsrecht konkretisieren eine staatliche Pflicht zum Demokratieschutz. Entsprechend ist es staatliche Aufgabe, zivilgesellschaftliche Räume zu stärken und zu schützen.
Die Berliner Bildungssenatorin, Katharina Günther-Wünsch, trennt seit Februar geflüchtete Kinder und Jugendliche von nicht geflüchteten Schüler*innen. Dazu errichtet die Berliner Verwaltung derzeit Schulen in Not- und Sammelunterkünften. Diese Segregation ist verfassungs-, europa- und völkerrechtswidrig. Außerdem stellt sie ein bildungs- und migrationspolitisch fatales Signal dar. So zielt die neue Segregationsstrategie darauf ab, parallele bzw. segregierte Bildungsinstitutionen zu schaffen – und das erinnert an die US-amerikanische Doktrin: separate but equal.
In July 2008, in an intensely debated and enormously consequential case, Turkey’s Constitutional Court weighed whether to close the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and ban its 71 leading members, including then-Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Six of the eleven justices voted in favor – falling just one vote short of the super-majority required to dissolve the AKP and bar its leaders from politics for five years. More than 15 years after the AKP closure case, Turkey has experienced significant democratic backsliding, and Erdoğan has secured a third term as president, extending his tenure in office into 2028. Although the tools of “militant democracy” may be useful, the Turkish case suggests that targeted legal interventions, rather than sweeping party bans, may be more effective at safeguarding democracy.
The Indian Constitution is as much a culmination of the ideas of the freedom movement against colonial powers as it is of the achievement of a social revolution through law. Our Constitution, which was inspired by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, thus, not only provided for political freedom from foreign rule and established a democratic republic, but it also provided a road map to undo the deeply entrenched hierarchies, inequalities, and social exclusions in our society and therefore for a social transformation. Much of the civil society interventions of the last seven decades have been to work for redeeming the promise of the constitution inside and outside courts.
Party banning was developed in Spain in 2002, with the aim of combating the terrorism of ETA (1958-2018), an extreme left-wing and separatist Basque organisation that murdered more than 800 people. This instrument proved useful in defeating the terrorist group and its network of support organisations, including several parties. Today, there are strong separatist or pro-independence movements in Catalonia, the Basque Country and, to a lesser extent, Galicia, and other regions. Faced with this, there are parties that have proposed using the mechanism of banning parties. But is this viable, and would it be useful?
Images of hundreds of men gathering outside the former headquarters of the Italian post-fascist party (Movimento Sociale Italiano – MSI), giving the Roman salute in Acca Larentia (Roma) on the 8th of January 2024, have sparked numerous controversies in Italy. The Roman salute was paired with the Fascist ritual of the “roll call”, whereby a leader calls out the name of a fallen soldier and his comrades shout “presente!”. While one would expect the President of the Senate, facing an incident that stirred political controversy, to reason in more institutional terms rather than strictly legally, La Russa was partially correct in stating that the current Italian legal framework is (still) not sufficiently clear and coherent on the matter.
For almost a decade now, the European Union (EU) has been struggling with the erosion of the rule of law in some of its Member States. The IEP explored the various pillars of the rule of law resilience, culminating in the recent RESILIO report. Unsurprisingly, the independent judiciary and effective public administration prove to be key for the functioning of the rule of law. To remain resilient, the rule of law needs a solid democratic political culture anchored in a robust civil society, independent media, and a sound public debate. Henceforth, a long-term investment in democracy is the best way to strengthen the resilience of the rule of law.
Es ist fraglich, ob es tatsächlich die Anzahl kleiner Parteien im Europaparlament ist, die dessen Handlungsfähigkeit gefährdet. Eher geht die Gefahr wohl von der zunehmenden Anzahl an rechtsextremen und antieuropäischen Abgeordneten aus, die es sich zum Wahlziel gemacht haben, eine Sperrminorität zu erreichen und damit das Europaparlament zu blockieren – und die nicht notwendigerweise aus kleinen Parteien stammen. Um die Handlungsfähigkeit des Parlaments zu sichern, sollten sich Politiker:innen darauf konzentrieren, Wählerstimmen für eine stabile pro-europäische Mehrheit zurückzugewinnen.
13. September 2025
Giovanni Capoccia
12. September 2025
Anne Peters
12. September 2025
Anne Peters