In focusing on the modern state and its enemies, this book considers the historical intellectual developments that provided the fundaments of the modern state, informed the key theoretical questions arising in the democratic context (e.g., representation, participation, policing and the use of force) and shaped the relationship between (state) sovereignty and (individual) liberty. The modern state as a nation-state is thus based on the relationship between its territory, its people and its sovereign authority. As a result, nationalism and minorities policy are issues that are key to the state's self-conception. But historically, these have also been repeatedly used as weapons against the state, manifesting in separatism, irredentism and antidemocratic agitation. Both antisemitism and right-wing extremism have historically stood in opposition to the democratic state and continue to do so today. Antisemitism in particular is antithetical to modernity, as it fundamentally rejects equality and individual liberty.

Democracies still face threats to their existence today. With autocratic regimes, political power is clearly based on the executive prerogative, meaning the use of force by police and military, thereby guaranteeing domestic stability through the threat and—if necessary—use of force (assuming there is no military intervention from abroad) (Chapter 3). In contrast, the political power of democracies is ultimately based on their power of persuasion, a principle that is often challenged and subverted by opponents of democracy, especially in times of social and economic crisis. Here, a democracy ideally means a constitutional order that guarantees universally applicable, generally formulated, nonretroactive laws while also having the ability to enforce these with sovereign authority, and that furthermore cements the separation of politics and jurisprudence by prohibiting the enactment of excessively vague blanket clauses. What differentiates democracies in practice is the particular way in which the demos is given the power to rule over itself: the resulting organizational rules are not only formal principles but also the outcome of substantive debates concerning the structures and functions of democracy. The distinctive modus operandi of each democratic system is thus also an expression of a particular understanding of democracy, with its own systemic answers to the central theoretical questions of democracy.