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Palgrave Macmillan

Political Extremism in Democracies

Combating Intolerance

  • Book
  • © 2012

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Authors:
  1. William M. Downs
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Table of contents (7 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xvi
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  2. Pariahs in Their Midst: Organized Extremism and the Problem of Tolerance in Contemporary Democracies

    • William M. Downs
    Pages 1-23

  3. Ignore, Isolate, Co-Opt, Collaborate, or Ban? Mapping Strategic Responses to Pariah Parties

    • William M. Downs
    Pages 25-52

  4. Determinants of Democratic Defensiveness

    • William M. Downs
    Pages 53-79

  5. Is the Cordon Sanitaire Effective?

    • William M. Downs
    Pages 81-109

  6. The Moderating Effects of Incumbency?

    • William M. Downs
    Pages 111-146

  7. Responding to Political Extremism without Succumbing to it

    • William M. Downs
    Pages 147-172

  8. Ban the Bans, but Guard the Threshold? “Lessons” from Old to New Democracies

    • William M. Downs
    Pages 173-201

  9. Back Matter

    Pages 203-238
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Keywords

About this book

When political 'extremists' - organized into parties that compete openly and successfully in democratic elections - enter the conventional institutional arena, how do mainstream actors react? This book deals with understanding how democracies respond to party-based extremism and with what consequences.

Reviews

"Downs offers an original perspective on a classic yet timely paradox faced by liberal democracies: the degree to which the political system should tolerate parties that are not themselves tolerant of political or social pluralism. While the empirical examples are focused on extremist parties in Europe, the conceptual framework clearly extends beyond these particular cases to both fledgling and established democracies." - Benjamin Bowyer, Civic Engagement Research Group, Mills College

About the author

WILLIAM M. DOWNS Associate Dean for Social and Behavioral Sciences in the College of Arts and Sciences, an Associate Professor of Political Science, and the co-director of the Center for Human Rights and Democracy at Georgia State University, USA. He is the author of Coalition Government, Subnational Style: Multiparty Politics in Europe's Regional Parliaments and has published research articles on political parties, electoral behavior, legislative institutions, and extremism in such journals as Parliamentary Affairs, West European Politics, Electoral Studies, Government & Opposition, Journal of Contemporary European Studies, Contemporary Politics, and Perspectives on European Politics and Society. Downs has held a Fulbright research fellowship in Belgium, been a research fellow at Harvard University's Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, and served as a visiting faculty member at Aarhus University in Denmark.

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