Sovereignty belongs to whoever decides when the normal legal order is suspended.
Carl Schmitt opened Political Theology (1922) with the claim that the sovereign is the one who decides on the exception. Written amid the crises of the Weimar Republic, it argued that no legal order can fully govern emergencies, so real power lies with whoever decides that one exists. Schmitt joined the Nazi party in 1933.
In practice
- A government declares a state of emergency and uses it to postpone an election.
- A company's crisis committee suspends the usual approval rules and afterwards never quite restores them.
- Possible explanations
- One explanation is that written rules cannot anticipate every emergency, so someone must judge when they no longer apply. Another is that emergency powers, once used, are rarely surrendered in full.
- In its favour
- Studied across the political spectrum as an analysis of emergency powers, including by thinkers on the left such as Agamben, and consistent with the frequent use of emergencies to extend executive power.
- Against it
- Liberal constitutionalists argue that emergencies can be governed by law, through time limits, legislative approval and judicial review. Schmitt's own career shows the theory being used to justify dictatorship.
- Standing
- Contested as political theory, and read in the light of Schmitt's support for the Nazi regime. Compare Higgs's ratchet.
- Further reading
- Wikipedia
- Subject
- Law & Politics
- Essay
- Competing accounts of how power works