Militant Democracy beyond Loewenstein: George van den Bergh’s 1936 Inaugural Lecture

Abstract

The German émigré political scientist and lawyer Karl Loewenstein is widely recognized as the ‘father’ of the concept of militant democracy. This is understandable, given his impressive comparative work on legal measures to protect democracy and the fact that he published in English and in internationally well-known journals. However, around the same time, other thinkers also wrestled with the same democratic dilemma of how to defend democracy against antidemocrats. This chapter introduces a largely neglected Dutch theorist of militant democracy: George van den Bergh. His 1936 inaugural lecture as a professor of constitutional law at the University of Amsterdam offers important insights on militant democracy, and, more importantly, it presents precisely that what is lacking from Loewenstein’s work: a political-philosophical justification for confronting antidemocrats. First, Loewenstein’s approach is outlined. Second, Van den Bergh’s work is introduced and contextualized (as a response to Kelsen’s relativist conception of democracy), before offering two interpretations of his ideas. It is argued that the second interpretation, ‘democracy as self-correction’, offers his most original and fruitful contribution to the militant democracy debate. This conception is then further elaborated by comparing it with another virtually unknown, but interesting, participant in 1930s debates on the defense of democracy, Van den Bergh’s French contemporary Milan Markovitch. The chapter concludes by discussing the harsh reception of Van den Bergh’s ideas in the Dutch interwar debate on democracy, and his 1960 farewell lecture, in which he addresses the issue for the first, and last time, after the Second World War.