El agente encubierto como medio de prueba y prohibiciones de la prueba

authori-tarian, and populist democracy. While no party calls for a pure populist radical right democracy, and probably no two family members defend an identical form of democracy, the whole party family supports an ethno-cratic regime with strong authoritarian and plebiscitary elements. This essentially monist interpretation of democracy is at odds with some fun-damental aspects of liberal democracy.

It is obvious that a nativist democracy, whether based upon forced monoculturalism or ethnocracy, opposes key elements of liberal democ-racy, most notably the protection of minorities and the centrality of individual rights. Regarding its authoritarianism, no inherent contradic-tions exist, but in practice various parties push the limits of the rule of law (Rechtsstaat) in favor of a state of security (Sicherheitsstaat) (Mudde 2006). Convinced that the nation is under an imminent threat from aliens (varying from immigrants to Islamic terrorists), the populist radical right believes that the state should no longer be obstructed in its defensive actions by principles like the right to privacy or legal counsel.

The relationship between populist democracy and liberal democracy is somewhat more subtle. Many authors will agree that “[a] plebiscitarian approach to direct democracy might [thus] easily undermine rather than support the democratic cultural goods (tolerance, compromising skills, other-regarding perspectives) produced through deliberative representa-tional practices” (Barney & Laycock 1999: 334; also Abts & Rummens 2005). Referendums are also believed to weaken political parties and fragment party systems, thus undermining key institutions of contempo-rary democracies. However, empirical proof for these assertions is hard to come by (e.g. Ladner & Braendle 1999). Similarly, the critique that personalization of power leads to antiliberal regimes, as has happened in Latin America (e.g. Werz 2003b), ignores the fact that various strong liberal democracies with powerful political leaders exist within Europe (e.g. Britain and France).

Most problematic is the radical interpretation of the primacy of the political, particularly with respect to the judiciary. Within the populist

156 Issues

idea the “general will” of the people is the basis of democracy and cannot be limited by anything. Consequently, populists will defend an extreme form of majoritarian democracy, in which minority rights can exist only as long as the majority supports them. Similarly, constitutional pro-visions are valid only as long as they have majority support. While these aspects are generally not expressed in the party literature – which in fact rather stresses the opposite (political independence of the judiciary) – the practice shows that once in power the populist radical right clearly fol-lows these ideas (see also 12.3). This has led to some serious (attempts at) infringements of constitutionally protected liberal rights (e.g. in Austria, Croatia, Italy, and Slovakia).

As a general rule then, we can conclude that populist radical right democracy is fundamentally at odds with liberal democracy because of its monism, most strongly expressed in its nativism and populism. Con-sequently, the more liberal a democracy is, the more antisystem the pop-ulist radical right will be. Similarly, we can posit that the more ethnic and plebiscitary a democracy, the more pro-system the populist radical right. Hence the strong support for the constitution of populist radical right parties in Croatia, Estonia, Germany (until the revision), Israel, Switzerland, or Turkey. This again shows that if one wants to use the term populist radical right in a (nearly) universal way, i.e. not limiting it to liberal democracies, the antisystem criteria cannot be included in the definition (cf. Ignazi 2003).

This leads us to the normative question: how dangerous is the populist radical right? Various authors have argued that populist democracy in general is non- or even antidemocratic (Abts & Rummens 2005). How-ever, this is only accurate if the term democracy is used exclusively for the subtype liberal democracy; which is what most authors also implicitly or explicitly do. Similarly, the argument that the populist radical right is antipolitical holds only for certain (liberal) definitions of politics (cf.

Schedler 1997). In fact, one could equally argue that the populist radical right is extremely political, in the sense that it believes in the primacy of politics over all other forces, including economics and history (e.g.

Decker 2004).

Another popular view, particularly among scholars of and from Eastern Europe, holds that the populist radical right might not constitute a major challenge to the established democracies in the West, but does represent a fundamental threat to the fragile new democracies in the postcommunist East (e.g. Thieme 2005; Bayer 2002). According to some authors, this is at least in part a result of the greater strength of the populist radical right in the East. Josef Bayer has posited that “[r]adical right parties are fringe phenomena in Western democracies, whereas they are used as possible

Populist radical right democracy 157 smaller coalition partners or majority providers in Central and Eastern Europe” (2002: 267). A quick look at the situation in the two parts of Europe quickly disproves this statement: while no populist radical right party provides government support in the East in January 2006, three Western European countries have parties from this family in government (Austria, Italy, and Switzerland).

A more convincing argument is based on the allegedly weaker demo-cratic culture of postcommunist countries. Istv´an Gyarmati, senior vice-president of the East-West Institute and a former Hungarian deputy defense minister, has expressed this view forcefully:

There is a general trend in Europe which is the re-emergence of the extreme right, as various radical elements look for solutions outside the system . . . But in Central Europe, this is more dangerous than in Western Europe, because in Central Europe, democratic thinking and the democratic public are not quite so stable. (New York Times 12/05/2002)

While his view is broadly shared within the academic literature, the empir-ical evidence does not fully substantiate this claim either (Mudde 2005b).

Inter-regional differences in terms of democratic quality do exist, but they are not always larger than intra-regional variations. For example, it is debatable whether in terms of “democratic thinking” Estonia or Slovenia have more in common with Bulgaria or Romania than with Finland or Austria (e.g. Pollack et al. 2003; Plasser et al. 1998).

In conclusion then, while the populist radical right does not consti-tute a fundamental challenge to the democratic procedural system itself, clear tensions exist between its interpretation of democracy and liberal democracy. On various fundamental procedures and values, populist rad-ical right democracy and liberal democracy clash in both theory and practice. At the core of this tension is the distinction between monism and pluralism: whereas populist radical right democracy considers soci-eties to be essentially homogeneous collectives, liberal democracy pre-supposes societies to be made up of groups of fundamentally different individuals.