Crisis as Sovereignty: The Architecture of Emergency Rule in the Modern Political Order
Abstract: This monograph presents a comprehensive analysis of the political deployment of emergency powers through the lens of Carl Schmitt’s theory of the “state of exception.” Arguing that crisis is not merely a disruption but a tool of governance, it situates the exception as a constitutive feature of sovereignty in the 20th and 21st centuries. Drawing on the works of Giorgio Agamben, Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, and contemporary case studies, the work unpacks the recursive normalization of emergency, offering counterarguments and policy recommendations to resist the erosion of democratic institutions. The monograph ultimately theorizes a “crisis-industrial complex” whereby state, corporate, and technological actors co-construct a regime of perpetual exception.
