Thema: Autoritarismus & Populismus

Verfassungserosion, demokratischer Rückschritt, verfassungsrechtliche Herausforderungen demokratischer Regierungsführung, populistischer Konstitutionalismus und verfassungsrechtliche Antworten auf Autoritarismus. Umfasst wehrhafte Demokratie, verfassungsrechtliche Selbstverteidigung und verfassungsrechtliche Mechanismen gegen demokratische Erosion.

Eine wirkliche Gefahr für die Verfassung

Recht und Gesetz sind keine Garanten dafür, dass sich staatliche Akteure an demokratische Spielregeln halten. Friedhelm Hufen hat in der FAZ kürzlich einen Text veröffentlicht, in dem er implizit das Gegenteil behauptet: Potenzielle Wahlerfolge der AfD in einem deutschen Bundesland seien keine Gefahr für die freiheitlich demokratische Grundordnung, weil die „Mechanismen der streitbaren Demokratie” und die Gewaltenteilung Schutz genug sind. Aber Hufen verfehlt den Kern der Debatte. Here is why. 

3. Februar 2024

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Möglich, aber nicht hinzunehmen

Es gibt wirksame Mittel, Sand ins Parlamentsgetriebe zu streuen, also das parlamentarische Verfahren zu verzögern oder sogar Beschlüsse zu verhindern. Obstruktion gehört zum Parlamentarismus. Sie ist in einem Parlament leicht zu praktizieren, aber schwer zu bekämpfen. Bislang werden Obstruktionsmittel von parlamentarischen Minderheiten, vor allem von Oppositionsfraktionen, genutzt. Je größer die Oppositionsfraktionen sind, desto mehr Obstruktionsmittel stehen ihnen zur Verfügung.

29. Januar 2024

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Parlamentarische Obstruktion

Eine autoritär-populistische Partei nutzt ihre demokratischen Rechte, um die demokratischen Rechte anderer abzubauen. Das tut sie im Namen des “Volkes”, das sie anfangs durch Wahlen legitimiert. Einmal an der Macht, bedient sie sich mit der Legitimation der Wähler*innen legaler Methoden, um ihre Pläne “im Pluralismus der legitimen Rechtsformen zu verstecken”. Mit entsprechender Mehrheit kann sie die Verfassung durch Verfassungsänderungen weniger demokratisch machen. Aber auch ohne eine solche Mehrheit oder Regierungsbeteiligung können autoritär-populistische Parteien Demokratie und Rechtsstaat auf Bundes- oder Länderebene auf vermeintlich verfassungsgemäßen Wege untergraben.

29. Januar 2024

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Same, Same but Different?

The Commission’s decision to release a significant amount of EU money is a testament to some serious pitfalls in the mechanism, which governs the unblocking of frozen EU funds. To recall, Hungary’s endowments are blocked via two different channels, based on two different conditionality criteria, which have some overlapping points. Both prescribe reforms to preserve the independence of the judiciary, which according to the Commission’s justification has been successfully accomplished by Hungary.  The Commission has, however, never published a detailed plan that would attach a specific amount to be released to every sufficiently satisfied conditionality criterion. In this blog post, I showcase that the overlap between the two conditionality mechanisms and the absence of a robust ex-ante blueprint for releasing frozen funds make the unblocking process highly obscure. This lack of transparency both decreases the efficiency and robustness of conditionality, and increases the tendency for inter-institutional conflicts.

21. Dezember 2023

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Same Old, Same Old

Following the General Affairs Council on 12 December 2023, the Spanish presidency issued its conclusions on the evaluation of the Annual Rule of Law Dialogue (ARoLD). The overly positive assessment that transpires from the conclusion fails to convince, due to the continued reliance on confidentiality and the lack of any tangible standards. Moreover, the improvements suggested by the Presidency fall overwhelmingly short of addressing the issues that plague this instrument, confirming it as a weak exercise in posturing with no real stakes involved.  

15. Dezember 2023

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Trick and Treat?

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Almost a year has passed since the European Union decided to block the payment of EUR 27 billion in union funds to Hungary under several instruments. Access to the largest part of the frozen funds - altogether EUR 13 billion - depends on whether Hungary complies with its undertakings to strengthen judicial independence. The government claims to have met all four of the so-called super milestones by adopting a judicial package in May 2023 and requests access to the blocked funds under Hungary’s Recovery and Resilience Fund (RRF) and ten different operative programmes. However, upon taking a closer look at the preconditions to the payments and the nature and implementation of the proposed reforms, it becomes clear that Hungary is still playing tricks to avoid compliance.

12. Dezember 2023

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Beating a Dead Horse

With the view of potentially revising how the EU Council’s Annual Rule of Law, the Spanish Presidency of the Council had sent out a “questionnaire for the Member States on the evaluation of the Council’s annual rule of law dialogue. The provided answers will inform conclusions to be adopted following the General Affairs Council scheduled for 12 December 2023. Following the disclosure of the MS’ answers to this questionnaire, this post will discuss the added value of this discursive and secretive tool to address systemic threats to or violations of the rule of law. I argue that the answers reveal the dialogue to be an ultimately toothless and partially incoherent exercise that relies excessively on the good faith of its participants and lacks accountability by design.

7. Dezember 2023

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Prize and Premiership

Since the beginning of November, Italy has been discussing a constitutional reform that aims to radically change the Italian governmental system. The bill provides that the Prime Minister (more correctly: the President of the Council of Ministers) is elected by universal suffrage in a popular vote concurrent with the Chamber of Deputies and Senate elections. This move is often referred to in journalism as ‘Premiership’ (Premierato). n this post, I would like to focus less on the characteristics of the alleged ‘Premiership’ and more on the attempt to incorporate detailed electoral rules into the constitution. First, a brief history of the ‘majority prize’ will help the reader to better understand the context in which this reform was born. This will be followed by a critique of the proposal to enshrine the ‘majority prize’ in the constitution. I argue that, as currently drafted, the reform bill risks leading to an unconstitutional constitutional amendment.

28. November 2023

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Change for the Sake of Change

On 19 November 2023, Argentinian citizens voted in a run-off election between Sergio Massa, the current Minister of Economy, and Javier Milei, the libertarian candidate, to elect the president of the Republic for the next four years. With a difference of 11%, Milei,  an anarcho-libertarian and anti-caste populist, won over the populist alternative of the Peronist apparatus. The result of the elections means that 40 years after the restoration of democracy, the extreme right has come back into power in Argentina. In this blog, we offer an explanation of Milei's electoral win and map how Argentina's constitutional institutions might help reign in some of his more radical proposals.

26. November 2023

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Is France Desacralizing its Constitution?

From 2002 to the present day, hundreds of constitutional bills have been proposed by delegates in Parliament, with forty of them being introduced within a year following the renewal of the Assemblée Nationale after the 2022 legislative elections. Each bill contains unique and far-reaching provisions. The proposals illustrate a shift within secondary constituent power, which no longer perceives the Constitution as a sacred text, the supreme standard of the French legal order, but as a wish list, and as an object of political communication subject to trivial media considerations.

16. November 2023