Democrazia senza compromessi. Carl Schmitt e la Costituzione materiale nei primi anni Trenta

The political scenario in Europe during the 1920s and 1930s was alarming. Illiberal movements and forces were waging war against democratic institutions while exploiting the rights and freedoms that democracy guaranteed. Before Karl Loewenstein’s famous call for militant democracy in the mid-1930s, Carl Schmitt developed a notion of material constitutionalism that went hand in hand with a full-fledged conception of constrained democracy. Although it was a highly conservative and somewhat authoritarian view of democratic politics, this article discusses Schmitt’s proposal in the early 1930s to unearth his understanding of how a rigid constitution based on a set of unalterable substantive values should be protected from legislative interference. In doing so, it contributes to a thorough understanding of Schmitt’s concrete order thinking as an early form of material constitutionalism.