Thomas Kent has published “A Precarious Balance” – a new article in Persuasion arguing that caution and restraint are needed in taking undemocratic steps to protect the norms and institutions of liberal democracy. Examining recent, high-profile examples – the banning of RT and Sputnik in Britain, the wiretapping of the AfD in Germany, and the ostracization of would-be presidential candidate Călin Georgescu in Romania – Kent argues that an immoderate and overzealous impulse to fend off threats to democracy can itself become propagandistic fodder for the enemies of Western liberalism.

Given present dangers, democratic governments may have no choice but to take highly undemocratic actions again to fend off authoritarianism and terror. But such measures should always be a last resort—and only after the exhaustion of the less draconian remedies of education, vigilance, and public exposure of malign actors.