ABSTRACT
In 2003 the radical Basque nationalist party, Herri Batasuna and its successors, Euskal Herritarrok and Batasuna, were banned for their integration in the terrorist organization Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA). Various other Batasuna successor parties were subsequently banned, but legalization of Bildu in 2011 and Sortu in 2012 brought the cycle of party bans to an end. This chapter examines these party ban decisions focusing on the parties’ orientation to violence, processes of securitization and desecuritization and veto player preferences. Data employed in the analysis includes parliamentary debates, court rulings and newspaper articles principally from the Spanish daily newspaper El Mundo. In the 2003 ban case, justifications of, political support for, and facilitation of ETA’s strategy of terrorist violence by the banned parties facilitated a securitization process in which all veto-players accepted the argument that the banned parties were integral to the terrorist organization ETA and thus a threat to the democratic system. In contrast, ETA’s 2011 cessation of armed struggle and Sortu and Bildu’s declarations explicitly condemning and rejecting political violence facilitated an authoritative Constitutional Court decision legalizing the parties. The Court adopted a desecuritization frame, conceiving of these radical Basque nationalist parties as vehicles channelling the negotiation of political conflict in the public sphere.
