Municipalities and Their Role in Containment

Abstract

Abstract This chapter focuses on municipalities, which we define as any subnational administrative units with some powers of self-government or jurisdiction. Considering the resources that municipalities can tap into, it is quite puzzling that the literature on liberal democratic self-defence has thus far overlooked them. This chapter fills this important gap by identifying two duties that fall upon them and are triggered under different circumstances. First, we argue that municipalities should refuse to cooperate with unreasonable central governments when they enact legislation that violates basic rights and opportunities. Second, under conditions of deconsolidation of liberal democracy, municipalities must promote initiatives that attempt to prefigure the politics that political liberals would like to see realized one day. In other words, municipalities should try to establish and nourish relations of freedom, equality, and fairness, which characterize the well-ordered society, within their jurisdiction in the here and now. We also argue that central governments committed to liberal democratic values should implement institutional mechanisms that empower municipalities to discharge the two duties of containment when the proper triggering conditions apply. To illustrate the workings of these two duties, this chapter focuses primarily on cities as agents of containment. As we will see, cities are particularly interesting given their contributions to real-world efforts to push back against right-wing populist and other illiberal and anti-democratic actors.