Under Exception, Issue 9
It's closer than you think.
March 21, 2026
Dear Readers,
This week’s issue examines a pattern becoming increasingly difficult to ignore: the migration of emergency powers from temporary responses into enduring structures of governance. Across contexts ranging from Trinidad and Tobago and Georgia to Myanmar and the United Kingdom, exceptional authorities are no longer confined to moments of acute crisis, but are shaping the routine exercise of political power.
The articles highlight different pathways through which this occurs—through repeated reactivation of emergency measures, through legislative and procedural erosion of oversight, and through the gradual embedding of exceptional practices within ordinary institutions. At the same time, cases like Canada demonstrate that this trajectory is not inevitable, and that legal constraints can still be meaningfully asserted.
Taken together, this issue reinforces a central ISSE concern: that the most consequential developments are not the invocation of emergency itself, but the processes through which it is normalized into governance. The question, increasingly, is not when the emergency ends, but what remains once it does.
Ed Bogan
Founder, Institute for the Study of States of Exception
ISSE Announcements
ISSE Office Hours (March 19): We were pleased to host Steptoe partner and Columbia School of Law lecturer Michel Paradis for a wide-ranging discussion on the ongoing Anthropic litigation and its broader implications for how law, technology, and emergency-like reasoning intersect. The lively conversation highlighted why developments like this are directly relevant to ISSE’s core inquiry into the expansion and normalization of exceptional authority.
Programs in Development: Behind the scenes, ISSE continues to build out its three core programmatic pillars. Our academic scholarship, legal action, and global reporting and analytic initiatives, will serve as the foundation for much of our in-house production. We look forward to sharing more in the coming weeks about how these programs will operate and how you can engage with them.
Global Events
A curated selection of recent developments involving emergency powers and constitutional governance.
Trinidad and Tobago declares new state of emergency over persistent violent crime, then extends it (Anselm Gibbs, the Associated Press, March 2026). Trinidad and Tobago declared a new state of emergency on March 3, 2026, just weeks after the previous one ended, citing credible threats of attacks on law enforcement and ongoing gang-related violence. The measure, which had an initial duration of up to 15 days, grants expanded powers such as warrantless arrests and searches, and was subsequently extended for three months following parliamentary approval on March 13. With the country having spent most of the past year under emergency rule, the case highlights the increasing normalization of extraordinary powers in response to persistent security challenges.
Nine times under emergency: A history of Trinidad and Tobago’s State of Emergency declarations: 1970-2026… (Khamarie Rodriguez, Daily Express, March 2026). This article traces the historical use of states of emergency in Trinidad and Tobago, noting that the 2026 declaration marks the ninth since independence and reflects a shift in how these powers are deployed. Once reserved for extraordinary crises such as political unrest or attempted coups, emergency measures are now increasingly used to address persistent issues like crime and gang violence. The pattern illustrates a broader evolution in which exceptional powers, originally designed for rare contingencies, are becoming more routinely integrated into governance.
Myanmar and the Institutionalization of Exception: Governance Five Years After the 2021 Coup (ISSE, March 2026). This analysis examines Myanmar five years after the 2021 coup, arguing that what began as a constitutionally framed state of emergency has evolved into an enduring system of governance shaped by the normalization of exceptional power. It traces how emergency authority has been extended, embedded across institutions, and ultimately transformed into a default mode of rule, even as competing claims to legitimacy leave sovereignty fragmented and unresolved. For ISSE, Myanmar represents a critical case in which the distinction between ordinary and exceptional governance collapses, raising the question of whether an “exit” from emergency remains meaningful once the exception has become the governing order.
Additional Resources
Selected commentary and analysis relevant to the evolving law of emergency powers.
U.S. Helsinki Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe presses Georgia over emergency-style crackdowns (U.S. Helsinki Commission, March 2026). A bipartisan statement from the U.S. Helsinki Commission on March 18, 2026, condemned Georgia’s use of emergency-style legislation to suppress opposition and undermine democratic institutions, citing findings from an OSCE Moscow Mechanism report. The report documents patterns of abusive prosecutions, violence against protesters and journalists, and widespread impunity, prompting U.S. lawmakers to call for coordinated sanctions with European partners. The episode highlights growing international concern that emergency-like legal tools are being systematically used to consolidate political control, blurring the line between crisis response and authoritarian governance.
Do states of emergency in the Caribbean suppress gang violence or spread it? The cases of Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago (Sandra Pellegrini, The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, September 2025). This report examines states of emergency in Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago, finding that while they may produce short-term reductions in violence, they are largely ineffective in addressing gang activity over the long term. It highlights how criminal networks adapt through fragmentation, mobility, and leadership succession, often leading to the displacement rather than elimination of violence. The analysis also illuminates the broader costs of emergency measures, including increased police abuses and the erosion of public trust, raising questions about their sustainability as a governance tool.
Canadian Courts Are Holding the Line on National Emergency Powers (Anvesh Jain, Lawfare, March 2026). This article situates the Americas within a growing “Hemisphere of Exceptions,” where governments increasingly rely on emergency powers as routine tools of governance to manage instability and bypass legislative constraints. Against this trend, it highlights Canada as a notable outlier, where the Federal Court of Appeal ruled that the 2022 invocation of the Emergencies Act was unlawful and exceeded statutory authority. The decision shows that the potential for judicial review to reassert legal limits on executive power, demonstrating that the normalization of emergency governance is neither inevitable nor uncontested.
Academic Literature
Recent scholarship examining the theory and practice of emergency governance.
Backdoor Executive Empowerment (Daniella Lock, Legal Studies Journal, September 2025). This article examines how recent UK legislation has expanded executive authority while weakening human rights protections, often through procedural mechanisms that marginalize parliamentary scrutiny rather than through overt constitutional change. It argues that between 2021 and 2023, a series of laws enabled “backdoor” executive empowerment, reflecting broader trends of diminished accountability and raising concerns about democratic erosion. For ISSE, the piece highlights how dynamics analogous to the state of exception can emerge without formal emergency declarations, as incremental procedural practices normalize reduced oversight and reshape the balance of power within democratic systems.
French dual constitutionalism, Tocqueville and Algeria: liberal authoritarianism as constitutional technique of liberal imperialism (Eugénie Mérieu, European Open Law Journal, March 2026). This article argues that “liberal authoritarianism” operates through a form of dual constitutionalism, in which liberal legal orders coexist with institutionalized states of exception that suspend rights across specific territories, populations, or moments. Focusing on colonial Algeria under the French Third Republic, it shows how emergency powers enabled a legalized dictatorship that facilitated market creation through expropriation, forced labor, and coercive restructuring of local economic systems. The analysis demonstrates how techniques developed in colonial contexts migrated back to the metropole, illustrating how exceptional governance can become embedded within, and ultimately reshape, liberal constitutional orders.
Capturing the minds: The role of child deportation in maintaining Russian authority over Ukraine’s occupied territories (Dr. Jade McGlynn and Anastasiia Romaniuk, European Journal of International Security, March 2026). This article examines Russia’s systematic deportation of Ukrainian children as a form of “politicised captivity,” in which the state exerts long-term control over a vulnerable population to achieve coercive, demographic, and ideological objectives. Drawing on biopolitics and the state of exception, it shows how legal, administrative, and institutional mechanisms, from filtration processes to adoption policies, are used to reshape identity, disrupt national continuity, and consolidate authority in occupied territories. For ISSE, the piece offers a powerful case study of how exceptional wartime practices are normalized into enduring systems of governance, transforming coercion into administratively routinized rule that alters the environment.
Rethinking crisis management - Technocracy, globalism, and the rise of emergenciocracy (Niccolò Bertuzzi, Social Sciences & Humanities Open Journal, February 2026). This article introduces the concept of “emergenciocracy,” describing a mode of governance in which emergencies become normalized as both a structural and rhetorical tool for managing the modern “polycrisis.” It argues that the growing reliance on technocratic expertise and centralized decision-making, particularly in areas like climate and energy, consolidates authority while bypassing democratic deliberation and potentially exacerbating inequality. The piece also highlights the paradoxical role of grassroots movements, whose use of emergency framing may unintentionally reinforce the very top-down governance structures they seek to challenge.
State Power and the Spectacle of Death: Violence, Impunity and Martyrdom in Fatima Bhutto’s Memoir “The Hour of the Wolf” (Mudassar Javed Baryar and Prof. Dr. Nailah Riaz, Qualitative Journal for Social Studies, March 2026). This article analyzes state violence and institutional impunity in Pakistan through Fatima Bhutto’s memoir The Hour of the Wolf, arguing that political violence operates not as a breakdown of governance but as one of its recurring modalities. It introduces the “Exception-Martyrdom Apparatus,” combining Agamben’s state of exception with Butler’s theory of grievability to show how law is suspended, accountability deferred, and death reframed through narratives of martyrdom. By treating the memoir as a counter-archive, the piece demonstrates how impunity is systematically produced and sustained, recasting political violence as an embedded feature of state power rather than an aberration.
Podcasts and Videos
Discussions and interviews exploring the legal and political dynamics of exceptional authority.
Statement from Trinidad and Tobago Attorney General John Jeremie SC on the State of Emergency (Trinidad and Tobago Television, March 2026). Trinidad and Tobago reimposed a state of emergency on March 3, 2026, in response to renewed gang violence and intelligence warning of imminent coordinated attacks, following an earlier emergency that had temporarily reduced crime. Government officials justified the move as necessary to address threats beyond the reach of ordinary law enforcement, while also acknowledging both the successes and limits of prior emergency measures and legislative reforms. The episode highlights a central ISSE concern: the cyclical reactivation of emergency powers, where temporary authorities risk becoming embedded in the routine practices of governance.
About ISSE
The Institute for the Study of States of Exception tracks and analyzes the use and misuse of emergency powers around the world, providing research and analysis on how exceptional authority shapes modern governance.