Restricting democracy for the sake of democracy. Explaining extreme-right party ban initiations in the Netherlands and Germany

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2014-08-18

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en

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This thesis aims to explain why political parties are banned in certain cases, while in other comparable cases such initiations do not take place. Previous theories have dealt with the normative and judicial components of this topic, but fail to explain the (non-)occurrence of party ban initiations. A theory of public debates is used to gain more insight in the rational of extreme-right party ban initiations. Four process-tracings of (non-)party ban initiations in Germany and the Netherlands combine newspaper content-analyses with expert interviews and historical and judicial backgrounds. The thesis concludes that public debates play a more prominent role in the Dutch case than in the German case. This could be caused by institutional arrangements, but also by the nature of the public debates.

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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen

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