Emergency governance and rule of law: evaluating executive overreach during national security crises in the post-pandemic era
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: The article in question explores how much emergency governance structures that were implemented during and after the COVID-19 pandemic have become institutionalized aspects of executive power in three jurisdictions that can be seen to represent three different types of regimes, including Germany (consolidated democracy), Kenya (transitioning state), and Hungary (illiberal regime). Using the theorisation of the so-called state of exception by Giorgio Agamben and the dictum of Carl Schmitt that he who declares the exception is the sovereign, the study utilizes qualitative content analysis of 274 executive decrees and 83 high-court decisions released between March 2020 and December 2025. These results indicate that there is a quantifiable tendency towards executive aggrandizement in all three cases, but the processes and the size are quite different. In consolidated democracies, the loss of judicial control is gradual and usually concealed by procedural adherence, in illiberal regimes it is explicit and supported by the institution, and in transitional states it is periodic but structurally disruptive. The article then ends with a suggestion of a compulsory framework of Sunset Clause, a legislative structure that mandates time-limited authorisation, a regular review of parliament, and the automatic lapse of all the powers related to security as a remedy to the normalisation of exceptional governance.
Source: Politics & Security
Author: Mariya Petrova
Institution: Varna Free University
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W7201832880