Abstract

Researchers studying the ways democracies apply force to terrorists and their supporters depart chrestomathically from three interrelated premises. First, that democracy by definition is characterized by the rule of law, independent judiciary and respect of fundamental political rights and freedoms. Second, that under such conditions it is virtually impossible for democratically elected governments to engage in excessive use of force against terrorists and their supporters, let alone passive backers. Third, since there is no denying that democratic regimes do apply excessive force to terrorists and their supporters, these cases are viewed as «mistakes» or «unintended deviations» from the basic principles of democracy; in other words, as something «alien» to democracy. The author argues that these a priori premises are too narrow, to say the least, and do not include all possible forms of democratic regimes. Starting with Fareed Zakaria’s concept of illiberal democracy, i. e. a political regime displaying authoritarian traits while being formally democratic, the author proceeds to demonstrate, with Peruvian and Sri Lankan regimes as the cases in point, that illiberal democratic regimes are naturally, by their logic and dynamics, predisposed to the unrestrained use of force against their terrorist rivals. The Peruvian case shows how democratically elected head of state could abuse his power in the course of fighting with a terrorist enemy while claiming to act as the sole true representative of ordinary citizens and the defender of their interests. The Peruvian government’s struggle with the terrorists gives us a top-to-bottom model of an illiberal democratic regime’s workings. The Sri Lankan case, on the other hand, represents a bottom-to-top model of an illiberal regime with the Sinhalese majority’s government initially mustering grassroots support for the discriminative actions against the Tamil ethnic minority and subsequently – for the harsh repressive measures against the Tamil separatists resorting to terrorist methods. The author concludes with suggestion that further unprejudiced research include not only illiberal democracies but also bona fide democratic regimes regularly resorting to excessive force in their dealings with terrorists.