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Starting question

3 dimensions of repression/social control (Earl 2003)

What sort of repression/social control in cases do you know of? Was it effective? Why/How?

al-Anani (2019) - responses to repression

• collective responses to repression
  • opposition movements’ tactics in responding to repression (i.e. mobilisation, backlash, de-escalation, etc.)
• individual responses to repression
  • specific individuals’ reactions to repression, shaped by emotions, memory, personal experiences, and grievances (e.g., disengagement, radicalisation)

al-Anani (2019) - research in brief

• 20 interviews between 2016 and 2018 with current and former members of Muslim Brotherhood
  • any notes about Egyptian context or specifics of Muslim Brotherhood?

al-Anani (2019) - research in brief

• 20 interviews between 2016 and 2018 with current and former members of Muslim Brotherhood
  • any notes about Egyptian context or specifics of Muslim Brotherhood?
• conjunctural cause of disengagement

The high cost of protesting and political participation coupled with frustration from the Brotherhood’s incapable leadership disenchanted several members who not only broke ties with the Brotherhood but also with politics as a whole.

Discussion point: pressure against Höcke

• GG Article 18 enables the BVerfG to suspend an individual’s fundamental rights (i.e., free expression, freedom of the press, and the right to vote and hold public office)
• the federal government has filed against 4 people in history of BRD
  • 1. Otto Ernst Remer in 1960; 2. Gerhard Frey in 1974; 3. Heinz Reisz in 1992; 4. Thomas Dienel in 1992
  • all rejected by BVerfG

Poll results - ending violence

Strategy most likely to end political violence?

end_pvCounts = aq.from(surveyResults)
  .select("end_pv")
  .groupby("end_pv")
  .count()
  .derive({ measure: d => "" })

// Calculate the maximum count from your dataset
end_pv_maxCountRE = Math.max(...end_pvCounts.objects().map(d => d.count));

plot_end_pv = Plot.plot({
  marks: [
    Plot.barY(end_pvCounts, {
      x: "end_pv",
      y: "count",
      fill: "end_pv",
      stroke: "black",
      strokeWidth: 1
    }),
    Plot.ruleY([respondentCount], { stroke: "#ffffff99" })
  ],
  color: {
    domain: [
      "Repression alone",
      "Concessions alone",
      "Repression followed by concessions",
      "Concessions followed by repression",
      "Neither repression nor concessions"
    ],
    range: [
      "indigo",
      "goldenrod",
      "cadetblue",
      "forestgreen",
      "violet"
    ]
  },
  marginBottom: 600,
  x: { label: "", tickSize: 2, tickRotate: -60, padding: 0.2,
    domain: ["Repression alone", "Concessions alone", "Repression followed by concessions", "Concessions followed by repression", "Neither repression nor concessions"]
  },  
  y: {
    label: "",
    tickSize: 10,
    tickFormat: d => d,
    tickValues: Array.from(
      new Set(end_pvCounts.objects().map(d => d.count))
    ).sort((a, b) => a - b),
    domain: [0, end_pv_maxCountRE]
  },
  facet: { data: end_pvCounts, x: "measure", label: "" },
  marginLeft: 60,
  style: {
    width: 1600,
    height: 500,
    fontSize: 40,
  },
});

banning

• (legal) justifications (in Germany, but similar in several other countries) (Arts. 21(2), 9(2) GG; Vereinsgesetz)
  • seeks to undermine or abolish the free democratic basic order
  • opposition to core constitutional principles (human dignity [(Art. 1 GG)], democracy, rule of law)
  • directed against ‘international understanding’
  • in continual violation of criminal law
• consequences
  • further activity is criminalised
  • re-forming the organisation is criminalised
  • assets are confiscated

Comparative case selection

x = causal variable; y = phenomenon to be explained

Further on case selection strategies, see Gerring (2007, e.g., pp. 89-90)

Banning successor parties - Bourne and Veugelers (2022)

Banning successor parties - Bourne and Veugelers (2022)

Banning successor parties - Bourne and Veugelers (2022)

• (slightly permeable) cordon sanitaire around MSI (ban alternative)

findings:

Banned & monitored (nationally) FR orgs in Germany (Zeller 2025)

Banned & monitored (nationally) FR orgs in Germany (Zeller 2025)

Banned & monitored (nationally) FR orgs in Germany (Zeller 2025)

Monitored (nationally) FR orgs in Germany (Zeller 2025)

Banning FR orgs in Germany - necessity (Zeller 2025)

• high far-right visibility is necessary for banning decisions

German governments banned far-right organisations only in years when far-right activity, in the form of violence or agitation, was highly visible. Conspicuous incidents of violence in particular were often a prod to proscriptive action. Organisational unlawfulness alone is not enough to explain banning decisions. Without public or political awareness, authorities appear unlikely to act, even if a group is technically illegal.

Banning FR orgs in Germany - sufficient patterns (Zeller 2025)

1. Neo-Nazi movement groups – organisations promote National Socialist ideology—legally sufficient for banning in Germany and several other countries—as well as racial hatred and violence.

Case 1: Nationale Offensive (NO) (Zeller 2025)

• typical of neo-Nazi sham parties pattern

• founded 1990 (by split from FAP) → linked to previously banned group

• not serious electoral contestation:

  • 0.2 per cent at local elections in Singen-Konstanz
  • 1992 BW Landtag elections: 183 votes out of five million cast

• BAN: by Rudolf Seiters (CDU): the NO ‘created and fuelled a xenophobic mood.’

• NO appealed… → Federal Administrative Court quashed appeal

mechanism: social and political pressure on minister ← indignation about high levels of far-right violence (HVIO) situation

Case 2: Collegium Humanum (CH) (Zeller 2025)

• typical of longstanding hubs pattern
• founded 1963 by Haverbeck (d. 1999) and Haverbeck-Wetzel
  • had charitable status (Gemeinnützigkeit)
  • meeting point (Vlotho, NRW) for far-right activists from all over
    • are there any banned orgs. to which the CH was not linked?!
  • publication: Stimme des Gewissens
• BAN: by Wolfgang Schäuble (CDU): the CH was directed against Germany’s constitutional order and repeatedly violated laws against Holocaust denial

Case 2: Collegium Humanum (CH) (Zeller 2025)

• typical of longstanding hubs pattern

• CH appealed… – Federal Administrative Court denied appeal

  1. CH publications repeatedly denied the Holocaust
  2. CH publications showed an affinity to and attempt to promote National Socialism
  • ideology of CH publication was sufficient legal basis (cf. Bundesverfassungsgericht 2009) – many fit this qualification…

• Mendel-Grundmann-Gesellschaft (MGG) active in Vlotho (research, then outreach)

• Vlothoer Bündnis gegen das CH (by local Greens)

• mechanism: high specific visibility, driven by local counter-mobilisation

informative epilogue to these cases (Zeller 2025)

Response to parliamentary inquiry (Deutscher Bundestag 1994). Asked about effects of banning, government asserted

the bans had achieved ‘widespread uncertainty and a lack of prospects in the right-wing extremist scene, far-reaching suppression of group activity by breaking up organisational structures and confiscating organisations’ assets, and the seizure of weapons’

Moreover: government claimed a sort of chilling effect, that other groups ‘have at least restricted their agitation activities in order to prevent bans’.

informative epilogue to these cases (Zeller 2025)

Conversely, gov. acknowledged that …

• BfV intelligence-gathering perhaps disrupted by banning action,
• activists might use banning as an opportunity to propagandise,
• bans could radicalise members (i.e., conspiratorial, aggressive),
• members might acquire more solidarity by enduring banning

Conclusions (Zeller 2025)

• inconsistency in German governments’ banning practices:
  • org. characteristics alone are not enough to explain bans
  • situational factors are causally significant and cannot be ignored
• the use of banning is sometimes a tool of politics rather than a targeted response to systemic threats
• high far-right visibility (HVIO+HPRO) necessary situation for ban
  • but that visibility is specific rather than generalised
    • builds social/political pressure to ban

A contentious concluding question

• what matters to BVerfG (Germany’s federal constitutional court)? … (https://www.bundesverfassungsgericht.de/EN/Verfahren/Wichtige-Verfahrensarten/Parteiverbotsverfahren/parteiverbotsverfahren_node.html) (cf. Backes 2019)
  • “actively belligerent, aggressive stance vis-à-vis the free democratic basic order and must seek to abolish it”
  • large/successful enough to potentially achieve its anti-constitutional goals
• the Bundestag, the Bundesrat, and the federal government can file for a ban