Constitutional Law and Politics Working Group and the EU Law Working Group are delighted to invite you to Professor Andrej Lang’s presentation on the role and limits of fourth branch institutions in preserving and promoting democracy.
The paper presentation examines the institutional role, normative justification, and practical capacity of fourth branch institutions in protecting democracy against authoritarian tendencies. While these hybrid institutions—ombudspersons, anti-corruption agencies, electoral commissions, information commissioners, human rights commissions, and similar non-majoritarian bodies broadly established to protect liberal democracy—are not typically associated with the classical repertoire of militant democratic tools (party bans, limitations on rights, etc.), the paper argues that they play a growing and indispensable role in defending constitutional democracy, particularly in the face of the new authoritarian playbook that relies on legalistic and procedural mechanisms to undermine democracy from within. It asks how their institutional design, independence, and authority as a form of administrative governance through expertise enable or constrain their ability to function as defenders of democracy. It also critically reflects whether and under what circumstances these institutions should be restructured to assume more explicitly the role of defenders of democracy against authoritarian tendencies. The analysis combines doctrinal legal analysis, comparative constitutional study, and political-institutional theory, integrating literature on authoritarianism and democratic backsliding.
Andrej Lang is Professor of Public Law, especially Public Economic Law, at Chemnitz University of Technology. His research examines constitutional law, EU law and public international law from a theory-driven, comparative, and interdisciplinary perspective. His work focuses particularly on the legal structures of the European and international economic order, European constitutional and institutional law, the protection of fundamental and human rights, and, more broadly, the interaction between law and institutions. Andrej Lang studied law and political science at Freie Universität Berlin, Panthéon-Sorbonne University (Paris I), and New York University School of Law. He has conducted his research, among others, at Harvard, Yale, and New York University. In 2019, he earned a Ph.D. in Law from Freie Universität Berlin with a dissertation on the role of constitutional adjudication in multi-level structures and transnational judicial networks. In 2025, he completed his habilitation at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg with a study on forms of non-judicial rights review. He has published in leading journals such as the American Journal of International Law, European Journal of International Law, International Journal of Constitutional Law, and Common Market Law Review.