Download This PaperA limited case for the relevance of the pandemic and the irrelevance of constitutional emergencies
26 Pages Posted: 19 Dec 2022
Date Written: October 2022
Abstract
What can we learn from comparing the current pandemic with the Great Influenza of 1918-1919? Are the emergency measures adopted all over the world the basis for a new paradigm of government based on health? Or are they just useful expedients to temporarily cope with the fragility of health care systems and facilitate the smooth reinstatement of the status quo ex ante? In this paper I argue for the relevance of the Covid-19 pandemic, as our capacities to think and act in the face of such an event have enormously developed since the Great Influenza. In the same vein I also argue for the relative irrelevance of the emergency measures adopted as new modes of thought questioning Schmittian ideas of political supremacy in times of crisis are now widely available. These are only limited cases, however, considering the persistent social and political tendency to face new problems with old concepts and intellectual frameworks. Perhaps the current pandemic is just another instance of Gramsci’s saying that “the old is dying and the new cannot be born”.
Keywords: Pandemic, Covid-19, states of exception, Agamben, Samuel Moyn, Carl Schmitt, constitutional emergencies, Welfare states
JEL Classification: K10, K32
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
Miguel Nogueira de Brito (Contact Author)
University of Lisbon - Lisbon Public Law Research Centre ( email )
Alameda da Universidade, Cidade Universitária
Lisboa, 1649-014
Portugal