Political Exclusion and the Limits of Militant Democracy
Political Exclusion and the Limits of Militant Democracy
This chapter addresses the question of whether there is a recognizably democratic course of action when only a policy of extended political exclusion might keep antidemocrats from sabotaging others' rights and crippling representative institutions. It explores the example of America's Reconstruction. In the aftermath of the Civil War, the members of the Reconstruction Congress feared that if Southerners were allowed to participate fully, they would undermine the foundations of legitimate government in the United States. Accordingly, the Congress established military governments throughout the South and excluded Southern representatives from the legislature. Applying the self-limiting model, the chapter illustrates why Congress' policy of conditioning restrictive measures on Southerners' acceptance of the rules of the democratic game successfully alleviated some, though not all, of the normative challenges posed by Southern antidemocrats. It also argues that a more extreme response to Southern intransigence would have been self-defeating.
Keywords: antidemocrats, Civil War, Southern states, Congress, Reconstruction
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