Reshaping Democracy after Authoritarianism: Responses to Neo-Fascism in Europe

The reconstruction of West European democracies after WWII ushered in several institutional innovations in democratic rule, including a variety of legal and policy arrangements limiting the participation rights of individuals and organizations tied to the previous fascist regimes.

Combining advances in democratization theory and historical institutionalism, this project is the first to analyze empirically policies regulating neo-fascist dissent in Western Europe between 1945 and today. Its broader goal is to establish a new research agenda on a hitherto neglected facet of democratization, namely how new democracies accommodate or restrict the dissent of the political heirs of the previous authoritarian regime.