How Mainstream Parties Fight Back Against Extremists: Explaining the Choice Among Strategies of Democratic Defense

In her talk Isabela Mares offers a long run historical analysis of how mainstream parties attempt to curb the electoral advance of extremist competitors. Presenting a comprehensive typology of democratic defense strategies – systemic (change in electoral rules), collective (party and association bans), and individual (actions targeting specific politicians), she theorizes the partisan incentives that shape the choice among them. Evaluating propositions using historical and contemporary evidence from France and Germany, the findings show that the early deployment of systemic defenses, especially electoral reforms, create a more favorable terrain for democratic resilience. By contrast, individual tools – such as the removal of parliamentary immunity – remain politically underused, despite their potential, revealing missed opportunities for democratic actors.

Isabela Mares is the Arnold Wolfers Professor of Political Science and the Director of the European Union Center at Yale University. She specializes in the comparative politics of Europe. Professor Mares has written extensively on labor market and social policy reforms, the political economy of taxation, electoral clientelism, and reforms limiting electoral corruption. Her book publications include From Open Secrets to Secret Voting (Cambridge University Press 2015) and Protecting the Ballot: How First Wave Democracies Ended Electoral Corruption (Princeton University Press 2022). Her current research examines the political responses to antiparliamentarism in both contemporary and historical settings.