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Societies face exceptional circumstances, such as military attacks or pandemics, often framed as safety and security threats. In such situations, emergency powers are frequently invoked, leading to the centralization of power in the executive or an expert committee. Decisions are shielded from public discussion, and dissent is often neglected or delegitimized. This raises serious concerns about democratic resilience, as the frequent use of emergency powers have been linked to weakening democratic institutions. This dissertation make a case for confronting exceptional circumstances, while remaining committed to the democratic principles of political equality, majority rule, and respect for pluralism and opposition.
I first put the problem of resorting to emergency powers in a historical perspective by reconstructing the arguments of Machiavelli, Locke, J.S. Mill, and Schmitt. I demonstrate that historically, opposing traditions that disagreed on core principles and institutions have all agreed on granting highly concentrated and discretionary decision-making powers to a single individual in exceptional circumstances. Machiavelli, a republican, advocated for a magistracy of dictatorship; Locke, a liberal, defended prerogative power; and Mill, a proponent of representative government, permitted temporary dictatorship. I argue that to preserve democracy during exceptional circumstances, a profound paradigm shift challenging predominant schools of thought is necessary.
Second, I conduct an interdisciplinary conceptual analysis of the notions of threat, security, and risk, drawing on constructivist international relations theories, challenging the prevailing attitude that security has primacy over democratic deliberation and dissent. I reject the notion that threat, security, and risk are apolitical concepts and can be approached from a neutral, objective standpoint, free from conflicting values, principles, and views of the common good. Instead, I argue that these ideas are inherently political and deeply intertwined with various value systems. Facts alone do not constitute threats; rather, threats are constructed through a process of normative evaluation of material conditions. A separatist rebellion can be seen primarily as a threat to territorial integrity and human lives for some. In contrast, some may not view it as a threat at all but rather as a just struggle for freedom. Similarly, the question of what security entails differs based on the different principles and priorities people uphold, looking different from a state-centered standpoint and human-centered or feminist standpoint. Moreover, identifying risks is, first and foremost, a speculative process where one anticipates an undesirable future and a portfolio of risks varies for people who have different priorities and conceptions of the good.The later part, contributes to the core debates of democratic theory and emerging literature on political parties. Having previously established that responding to security threats isn't a technical problem with a fixed solution but involves conflicting values and priorities that generate constant disagreement, I argue that democracy is uniquely suited to fairly settle these disagreements amid pervasive conflict about the good and the right. Finally, I explore the role political parties can play when faced with exceptional circumstances. I argue that political parties, as value-based entities and as “ordinary loci of political creativity” (Rosenblum, 2008), have the tools to develop matters of facts into their political form and frame them as threats in relation to a particular conception of the common good. Political parties, therefore, render the exceptional phenomena amenable to political discussion, decision, and, ultimately, action.
The dissertation concludes that we have increasingly normalized the exceptional exercise of power by leaders in ordinary circumstances, leading to democratic decline, we should adhere to ordinary procedures even under exceptional circumstances to counter democratic erosion.