THE MODERN SOCIAL CONTRACT DURING AND AFTER THE PANDEMIC: CONSTITUTIONALISM AND THE STATE OF PERMANENT EXCEPTION

Contextualization: The Modern Social Contract during and after the Covid-19 Pandemic is still the political and legal framework for understanding the historical-civilizational importance of the constitutional phenomenon, that is, of Constitutionalism and the linearity of its transformations, which are characterized in the present study, through the transition from the democratic State-Constitutionalism to the State-Constitutionalism of the exception, especially between the period related to the years 2020 and the beginning of the year 2022. Objectives: Discuss, based on Paolo Prodi's thinking, about the Modern Social Oath-Contract during and after the Pandemic;to analyze the conception of Constitutionalism as a historical phenomenon of power limitation;to carry out an approach to the permanent State of Exception, terminology used by philosopher Carl Schmitt, adopting as an observation parameter, which will take into account the trajectory of Democratic Constitutionalism to the Constitutionalism of Exception, the political and legal framework intended to face the effects of the Pandemic caused by the pandemic SARS-CoV-2 virus. Methodology: A phenomenological-hermeneutic approach methodology, historical and monographic procedure methods will be used, together with the technique of indirect documentation research. Result: A first conclusion, which comes from this work, carried out in the form of questioning, is the following: what remains of the Modern Social Contract in the face of the Decrees edited during the Pandemic?. © 2022, UNIVALI. All rights reserved.

Border securocracy: Global expansion of the U.S. Department of homeland security bureaucratic apparatus before, during and beyond covid-19

The U.S. border security apparatus is moving around the globe as climate change, the coronavirus pandemic and corporatization create political and economic chaos. Global north governments seek to keep out migrants and refugees from the global south while corporations in the global north want protection to maintain their wealth. U.S. government bureaucratic agencies such as Custom and Border Protection's Border Patrol Tactical Unit are sent abroad to expand U.S. influence in an empire of borders to train receptive government security and border forces and to regulate, detain and prevent migrants and refugees well beyond the U.S. border. Governments are waging war against the people, creating a "securocracy" comprised of profit seeking military arms corporations and allied government agents to quell resistance and border crossers. Examined are the effects and impacts of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security on global border securocracy beginning with an analysis of the Mexico-U.S. border, moving to international borders in Latin America and beyond. The theoretical concept of border securocracy is expanded from the securocracy literature in the context of the north versus south globalization conflict. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Administrative Theory & Praxis (Taylor & Francis Ltd) is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)

The Pandemic as an Idiosyncratic Case of a State of Exception

One of the characteristics of constitutionalism is that it usually flourishes in societies experiencing a state of normality. It is telling that its worldwide ascendance during the last two and a half centuries went hand-in-hand with a long-term mitigation of the use of mass organized violence in international as well as in national politics. COVID-19, however, is an asymmetric threat for humankind which could prove itself to have consequences comparable to those of a war. Whether this or eventual future pandemics might be enough to jeopardize the constitutional acquis is still an open question. Our aim shall be to show that the answer to such questions is not so much a matter of constitutional theory as of historical reality. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.

Revisiting the policy implications of COVID-19, asylum seekers, and migrants on the Mexico–U.S. border: Creating (and maintaining) states of exception in the Trump and Biden administrations

Public policy choices continue to bring dramatic changes to migration practices in the era of the coronavirus in the United States. In this article, we argue that the COVID-19 pandemic facilitated the creation and maintenance of states of exception while continuing to destabilize practices at the Mexico–U.S. border through the politics of fear. Specifically, the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), Zero Tolerance Policy (ZTP), COVID-19 CAPIO, Asylum Cooperative Agreements (ACA), and Title 42 used an arcane section of U.S. law to immediately expel asylum seekers and refugees. We show that these policies highlight the formation and maintenance of states of exception consistent with the work of Agamben. We further discuss how the politics of fear can reinforce hegemonic narratives targeting asylum seekers while shaping political agendas that lean toward a specific brand of nationalism using public health as a context. The U.S. government under the Trump administration—and the Biden administration to a lesser, yet continuous, extent—constructed these policies aimed primarily at refugees and asylum seekers from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico thereby violating laws and international treaty obligations. Related Articles: Duman, Yoav H. 2014. "Reducing the Fog? Immigrant Regularization and the State.” Politics & Policy 42(2): 187–220. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12065. Garrett, Terence Michael. 2020. "The Security Apparatus, Federal Magistrate Courts, and Detention Centers as Simulacra: The Effects of Trump's Zero Tolerance Policy on Migrants and Refugees in the Rio Grande Valley.” Politics & Policy 48(2): 372–95. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12348. Maggio, James. 2007. "The Presidential Rhetoric of Terror: The (Re)Creation of Reality Immediately after 9/11.” Politics & Policy 35(4): 819–35. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747-1346.2007.00085.x. © 2023 Policy Studies Organization.

The notion of exception in the Spanish constitution of 1978: Theory and practice

This article deals not only with the constitutional and legal norms as regards the right of exception in Spain, but also with their application concerning the four cases which have occurred so far (This work covers up to 15 December 2021.). Furthermore, the article highlights the gap between regulations and reality or how the mentioned right has been misapplied in most of the cited cases, while providing the underlying reasons. © The Author(s), 2022. All rights reserved.

Does the COVID-19 pandemic lead to an infra-state of exception: Turkey's responses and dismantling its medico-scientific policies.

The new coronavirus strain that spread across the globe in clusters and claimed millions of lives has significantly impacted how subjectivity and power are performed. The scientific committees empowered by the state have become the leading actors, lying at the heart of all responses to this performance. The article critically examines the symbiotic interaction of these dynamics regarding the COVID-19 experience in Turkey. The analysis of this emergency is divided into two basic stages: the pre-pandemic period, during which infra-level healthcare and risk mechanisms evolve, and the early post-pandemic period, during which alternative subjectivities are marginalised to hold a monopoly over the new normal and victims. Pivoting around the scholarly debates about sovereign exclusion, biopower, and environmental power, this analysis concludes that the Turkish case is an encounter in which these techniques are materialised within the body of the 'infra-state of exception.'

From the exception to the rule: Exceptionality as a way of governing Colombia, 1961–2022

In Colombia, the state of exception is a legal and political mechanism in which the head of the executive branch extends its powers temporarily under the pretext of averting a serious confrontation to the constitutional order. However, despite its exceptional nature, the reality is that within the national legal and political culture, the use of this figure is rather normal. Thus, this article aims to assess the way in which exceptionality has become recurrent, through states of exception and other figures that allow a margin of maneuver to the extraordinary executive power and outside the radar of constitutional controls. Likewise, the text examines how the governments have taken advantage of the notion of exceptionality as a form of government, subtly prolonging the periods of exception to circumvent the constitutional controls imposed on them. To this end, the article focuses in particular on what has recently happened with the health emergency caused by COVID-19 in the country. For this purpose, historical, contextual and comparative analysis tools were used. © 2023, Onati International Institute for the Sociology of Law. All rights reserved.

A Farewell to Homo Sacer? Sovereign Power and Bare Life in Agamben's Coronavirus Commentary

The article addresses Giorgio Agamben's critical commentary on the global governance of the Covid-19 pandemic as a paradigm of his political thought. While Agamben's comments have been criticized as exaggerated and conspiratorial, they arise from the conceptual constellation that he has developed starting from the first volume of his Homo Sacer series. At the centre of this constellation is the relation between the concepts of sovereign power and bare life, whose articulation in the figure of homo sacer Agamben traces from the Antiquity to the present. We shall demonstrate that any such articulation is impossible due to the belonging of these concepts to different planes, respectively empirical and transcendental, which Agamben brings together in a problematic fashion. His account of the sovereign state of exception collapses a plurality of empirical states of exception into a zone of indistinction between different exceptional states and the normal state and then elevates this very indistinction to the transcendental condition of intelligibility of politics as such. Conversely, the notion of bare life, originally posited as the transcendental condition of possibility of positive forms of life, is recast as an empirical figure, whose sole form is the absence of form. We conclude that this problematic articulation should be abandoned for a theory that rather highlights the non-relation between sovereign power and bare life, which conditions the possibility of resistance and transformation that remains obscure in Agamben's thought.

The state of exception and its effects on civil liberties in Italy during the COVID-19 crisis

The ongoing global pandemic represents an unprecedented challenge for contemporary political systems. This chapter focuses on the impacts of the pandemic containment measures and the consequent considerable restrictions to constitutional rights and civil liberties. It defines the essential elements of State of Exception (SoE) both in general and in the Italian context. The chapter explores some of the features that characterize the declaration and implementation of SoE on a global level with a focus on the COVID-19 emergency. It analyzes, respectively, the regulation and implementation of SoE and containment measures in Italy during the COVID-19 pandemic. The chapter explains the effects of SoE and containment measures on civil liberties. It also explains the main critical aspects of SoE in Italy and some implications relevant to both research and policymaking. © 2023 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

The State of Exception Between Schmitt and Agamben: On Topographies of Exceptionalism and the Constitutionality of COVID Quarantine Measures (with Examples from the Irish Context).

According to political philosopher Carl Schmitt (1888-1985), the emergency or State of Exception (Ausnahmezustand) is the ultimate test of political power and reveals in whom that power is vested. The State of Exception determines who is truly sovereign in a given state. Schmitt defines the sovereign act as a decision on the question of the exception, and further classifies sovereignty as a liminal term, a borderline concept (Grenzbegriff), suggesting a geometric metaphoricity underlying his conceptualization. On this theoretical basis, he develops the concept of decisionism, whereby the actual content or "what" of a decision is not the germane element, but rather the "who" of the decision and whether a given "who" (or decider) is the proper authority and possessor of the necessary sovereignty. This political philosophy is usually read in (and arguably tainted) by the immediate historical context in which it was conceived, namely 1930s Germany and the rise of National Socialism. Nevertheless, it has been reinvigorated recently as a paradigm used to explain government decisions taken under evolving COVID-19 pandemic conditions. The current use of Schmitt to understand the suspension of the normal order of things coincides with intense controversy about the work of one of his arch-critics-the surprising hero of the anti-lockdown anti-vaccination movement, Italian philosopher, Giorgio Agamben (1942 - ). The COVID State of Exception will be situated here between the competing philosophies of Schmitt and Agamben, with illustrative examples from, amongst other things, challenges to the Irish Constitution under pandemic conditions, in an attempt to reveal the rhetorical constructions of exceptionalism at work in political theory.

Agamben's state of exception and the pandemic. A critical note

The aim of this paper is to analyze the theoretical and political aporias of Agamben's theory of state of exception. The starting point of our argumentation is the Agambe-nian statement that the political governance of COVID-19 pandemic has confirmed the normalization of the state of exception. We dispute this assumption through a comparison with Schmittian concept of state of exception, in order to point out the incongruities of Agambenian reformulation of this notion. In our opinion, those equivocations result from the original refusal, by Agamben, of each legal and polit-ical dimension of modernity. In the second (and last) paragraph of the paper, we criticize how Agamben discuss the problem of state of exception in Dante's political philosophy.

The COVID-19 Pandemic Between Bio-Ethics, Bio-Law and Bio-Politics: A Case Study on The Italian Experience of The DuPre Commission

The aim of this qualitative study was to consider the question of whether the Italian political management of the pandemic respected the European bio-ethical and bio-juridical approaches in light of the principles of autonomy, dignity, integrity and vulnerability. As no specific consolidated literature exists on the subject, the Italian situation was taken into consideration, specifically the work of a spontaneous commission (DuPre) that collected the reflections of academics and researchers interested in discussing political decisions for the management of the emergency, which was the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. The analysis took into account the contributions of scholars during two conferences (without proceedings), which were transcribed and examined. From the texts processed with a thematic analysis, three main themes emerged: ‘pandemic as a state of exception, sovereignty and crisis of democracy', ‘the value of doubt and refutation' and ‘elimination of informed consent between persuasion and blackmail'. In this paper, the final bio-political considerations on the European approach and the management of the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy are presented. © 2022, Adam Mickiewicz University, Faculty of Philosophy. All rights reserved.

The surveillance state From fictional narratives to everyday life in the COVID 19 pandemic

The Covid 19 pandemic brought to mind apocalyptic fictional scripts: widespread alarm, empty streets, concentration camps with dead and infected. In the countries of the region, the states of exception declared to stop the advance of the pandemic put democracy on hold and increased the levels of social discontent in structurally unequal societies. In addition, it led the world to an unprecedented economic crisis and with it a social mistrust of the States. Cyberspace was restricted to urban elites, while the "others" were prisoners of surveillance and control. Currently, writing about the pandemic requires a revision of the critical theory on power and the subject in terms of the biological, social and political. For this reason, this essay is based on a bibliographic review from the Social Sciences, whose objective is to analyze and weave the links between the pandemic, surveillance, human rights and information technologies, which have configured a new scenario of social coexistence.

The Rule of Law and the Extraordinary Situation

The various legal theorists dealing with the operation and effect of law have mostly examined situations that can be described as occurring in the usual, regular, normal state of social life. Over the last half century, and particularly since the formation and later enlargement of the European Union, the requirement of the rule of law has emerged as a key topic. The test of the rule of law is as follows: it is necessary to examine in an abnormal situation or, as it were, in an extraordinary situation exactly how it is possible to take political decisions that are of fundamental importance to society while also guaranteeing that these decisions remain within the rule of law at all times. The aim of this study is to investigate how and by what constitutional mandate the Hungarian Government deviated from the normal constitutional situation in 2020. The “state of exception” theorised by Carl Schmitt and Giorgio Agamben means the suspension of the law. It is important to understand their views in order to see that the Hungarian situation in 2020 is utterly dissimilar to such a state of exception. In short, we need to distinguish a state of exception from an extraordinary situation, because the latter does not imply the suspension of law in general or, more specifically, the suspension of the rule of law, but that parliamentary and government decisions remain within it. The special legal order applied in an extraordinary situation is not in fact a suspension of democracy, still less of the rule of law. On the contrary, it actually falls within both: in a state of national crisis, this situation is democracy itself and the rule of law itself, and – accordingly – strict laws (both democratic and imposed within the rule of law), or rather laws of cardinal importance, make its conditions and its functioning possible and regulate it.

Accountability in times of exception: an exploratory study of account-giving practices during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy

Purpose>The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of accountability in times of exception. The Italian government's account-giving practices are critically analysed with respect to the distinct modes in which duties of accountability are discharged for the exceptional measures taken during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak in early 2020.Design/methodology/approach>This paper draws on an exploratory case study. The case analysis draws primarily on data obtained through publicly available documents and covers the period between January 1 and August 7, 2020.Findings>The paper reveals that the Italian government employed various accountability styles (rebuttal, dismissal, reactive, proactive and coactive). Each style influenced both how the government justified its conduct and how it sought to form distinctive relationships with social actors.Originality/value>The paper uses the notion of “styles of accountability” to empirically illustrate how an unprecedented public governance challenge can reveal broader accountability trends. The paper contributes to accountability research by elucidating how governments tackle ambiguity and uncertainty in their systems of public accountability in extraordinary times.

COVID-19, asylum seekers, and migrants on the Mexico-U.S. border: Creating states of exception.

The COVID-19 pandemic illuminates possibilities for creating states of exception while simultaneously destabilizing the Mexico-U.S. border through the politics of fear. Specifically, the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), Zero Tolerance Policy (ZTP), COVID-19 CAPIO, Asylum Cooperative Agreements (ACA), and Title 42-using the pandemic under an arcane section of U.S. law to immediately expel asylum seekers and refugees, in particular-highlight the formation of a state of exception consistent with the work of Agamben. They also document how the politics of fear is used to reinforce hegemonic narratives targeting asylum seekers while attempting to reinforce political agendas that lean toward a specific brand of nationalism using the lens of public health as a context. The U.S. government under the Trump administration, and the Biden administration to a lesser extent, constructed these policies aimed primarily at refugees and asylum seekers from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico, thereby violating laws and international treaty obligations. Related Articles: Correa-Cabrera, Guadalupe. 2013. "Security, Migration, and the Economy in the Texas-Tamaulipas Border Region: The 'Real' Effects of Mexico's Drug War." Politics & Policy 41(1): 65-82. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12005.Duman, Yoav H. 2014. "Reducing the Fog? Immigrant Regularization and the State." Politics & Policy 42(2): 187-220. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12065.Garrett, Terence M. 2020. "The Security Apparatus, Federal Magistrate Courts, and Detention Centers as Simulacra: The Effects of Trump's Zero Tolerance Policy on Migrants and Refugees in the Rio Grande Valley." Politics & Policy 48(2): 372-35. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12348.

La pandemia de COVID­19 ilumina las posibilidades de crear estados de excepción y, al mismo tiempo, desestabilizar la relación México­Estados Unidos. frontera a través de la política del miedo. Específicamente, los Protocolos de Protección de Migrantes (MPP), la Política de Tolerancia Cero (ZTP), Covid­19 CAPIO, los Acuerdos Cooperativos de Asilo (ACA) y el Título 42: usar la pandemia bajo una sección arcana de la ley de EE. UU. para expulsar de inmediato a los solicitantes de asilo y refugiados, en particular, destaca la formación de un estado de excepción consistente con el trabajo de Agamben mientras documenta cómo la política del miedo se usa para reforzar las narrativas hegemónicas dirigidas a los solicitantes de asilo mientras intenta reforzar las agendas políticas que se inclinan hacia una marca específica de nacionalismo usando la lente de la salud pública como contexto. El gobierno de los EE. UU. bajo la administración de Trump, y la administración de Biden en menor medida, construyeron estas políticas dirigidas principalmente a refugiados y solicitantes de asilo de El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras y México, violando así las leyes y las obligaciones de los tratados internacionales.

STATE OF EXCEPTION FOR THE DIGNITY OF THE HUMAN PERSON IN THE CURRENT PANDEMIC CONTEXT

Objectives: The article seeks to highlight, through bibliographic research, statistical data and philosophical reflections, the human, political and social conditions of Brazil as a Democratic State of Law, in view of the consequences to the citizen of the pandemic events of dissemination of the new Coronavirus, which causes COVID-19 in the world. Methodology: Based on the theoretical and deductive method, based on philosophical and legal works, as well as on Brazilian legislation and on statistical and scientific data in the health area, in order to point out ways to solve the problems raised. Results: The political and state decisions during the pandemic period awaken the inverse process in the maintenance of human, social and cultural dignity, causing a state of exception scenario to be installed, relativizing constitutional guarantees under the pretext of preserving the common good of all. Contributions: Considering the Principle of the Dignity of the Human Person as an essential and unavailable characteristic, which must be recognized in all environments as well as its guarantees hitherto guaranteed by the State, added to the State duty of protection in any historical situations experienced, the influence of new decisions governmental measures taken to contain the virus and the effects experienced by the population attack fundamental rights and make the social individual go through a moment of re-signification of values and containment of constitutional guarantees. © 2021, Centro Universitario Curitiba - UNICURITIBA. All rights reserved.

Education, neurosis and exception: What really matters in education during/ beyond the pandemic?

This study examines newspaper articles about education published in a refer-ence daily newspaper in Portugal during the measure taken to close schools as a way of containing the COVID-19 epidemic. During this three-month period, a total of 105 news items were collected involving several educational and political actors: government representatives from the areas of education, health and work, parents, teachers, school principals, union representatives and, on rare occa-sions, even students. A qualitative analysis of these news items based on thematic analysis revealed themes that appear at the core of schools – i.e. that are essential and should be resumed as soon as possible. Amid the ‘state of exception’, ‘neurotic citizenship’ is reinforced and managed by the government. Within this context, participation and inclusion seem to disappear from the discourse of education and are captured by work and economic issues that go beyond education itself. © 2021.

Unregulated or Insufficiently Regulated Constitutional Emergencies: A Theoretical and Practical Approach

Together with the usual legal disputes, dealt with through the standard legal instruments, certain situations sometimes arise which threaten the continuity of the constitutional order and require the application of extraordinary measures. These are scenarios that imply a greater concentration of power but still require respect for certain basic legal premises in order to prevent authoritarian behaviours. Since non-regulated or insufficiently regulated emergencies are the most extreme example of this, in the first part of the paper we will see that, even in these cases of true exception, there are sufficient legal criteria to confront danger with guarantees. We will then look at the way in which Spanish public authorities have applied such parameters with clearly positive outcomes and others that have been rather controversial. Crucial in the latter respect is the recent decision of the Spanish Constitutional Court, which has rightly established the partial unconstitutionality of Royal Decree 463/2020, of 14 March, declaring a state of alarm against COVID-19. Because a fundamental rights suspension cannot be accepted under this figure, a state of emergency should have been activated, as it requires parliamentary permission prior to the adoption of such measures. © 2020. All Rights Reserved.

Coronavirus State of Emergency as an Emerging state of Exception: Mutation or Constitutional Reform?

States have found it necessary to respond urgently to the coronavirus crisis by applying their constitutional and legal frameworks well aware, however, that the solutions offered would not fit entirely within the categories of emergency law in relation to the hierarchy of laws, decrees and other administrative regulations and the consequent guarantee of fundamental rights and freedoms. This has led to unconfessed changes in their constitutions (constitutional mutations) by means of consensual practices that have not yet been subjected to constitutional control or by the interpretation of the constitutional courts that has led precisely to such mutations. The latter has fortunately not been the case in Spain. The Spanish Constitutional Court has established in its recent judgment of 14 July 2021 that the state of alarm does not provide sufficient cover for the limitations of fundamental rights, especially with regard to the confinement imposed on citizens, which has meant a general suspension of the right to freedom of movement rather than just a limitation of the same. Therefore, the Spanish government should have declared a state of exception, which only requires a simple majority for its approval in Congress. The Spanish Government has justified that the declaration of a state of alarm was the only way to face the crisis due to the compelling need to adopt urgent measures, since the state of exception needs the prior consent of Congress. The best solution to this constitutional challenge, according to this study, is the reform of the Spanish constitution by creating a new state of emergency, an intermediate figure between the state of alarm and the state of exception, which provides the government with a means of urgency, requiring parliamentary ratification after a short period of time, similar to that which existed under the provisions of the 1931 Spanish Constitution. However, this would imply an aggravated constitutional reform whose procedure is particularly complex both legally and politically in Spain. In this respect, very few constitutions in the world have been reformed due to the coronavirus crisis, but the Pennsylvania constitution is an excellent reference for the Spanish constitutional system both in terms of content and procedure. © 2020. All Rights Reserved.