Law Commons^™

Intolerant Democracies, Gregory H. Fox, Georg Nolte

Law Faculty Research Publications

International law is increasingly concerned with national transitions to democratic government. The holding of free and fair elections alone, however, provides no guarantee that a democratic system will become firmly established and capable of resisting challenges by anti-democratic actors. The question thus arises of how intolerant a democracy may become toward such actors in order to preserve itself without relinquishing the claim of being democratic. This problem has arisen on a number of occasions, perhaps the most dramatically upon the cancellation of the second round of the Algerian elections in early 1992.

This Article explores the legal issues raised by …