States of Emergency

More than one hundred years after the conclusion of the First World War, the edited collection States of Emergency. Architecture, Urbanism, and the First World War reassesses what that cataclysmic global conflict meant for architecture and urbanism from a human, social, economic, and cultural perspective. Chapters probe how underdevelopment and economic collapse manifested spatially, how military technologies were repurposed by civilians, and how cultures of education, care, and memory emerged from battle. The collection places an emphasis on the various states of emergency as experienced by combatants and civilians across five continents—from refugee camps to military installations, villages to capital cities—thus uncovering the role architecture played in mitigating and exacerbating the everyday tragedy of war.

A politikai filozófia a világjárványról

Összefoglaló. Ez a filozófiai esszé arra tesz kísérletet, hogy megpróbálja nyomon követni a világjárvány kibontakozását, a változatos védelmi stratégiákat, valamint a mégiscsak bekövetkező tragédiákat a politikai filozófia perspektívájából. Mégpedig valós időben. Az esszé abból a hipotézisből indul ki, hogy az emberiséget váratlanul érte ugyan a járvány, mégis igen gyorsan tudott reagálni (lásd az oltóanyag előállításának gyorsaságát), az egyes emberek azonban nem tudtak kilépni saját természetük korlátai közül. Ennek megfelelően a hatalom ismét elkövette a szokásos hibákat, a lázadók lázadtak, és a politika továbbra is a konfliktusok kezelésének művészete maradt. A politikával foglalkozóknak azonban kincsesbánya ez a korszak a politika természetének elemzéséhez. Summary. This paper, written in the genre of the literary essay, tries to keep track of the birth and development of the pandemic, the various defence strategies and the tragedies that took place anyhow, from the perspective of the discipline of political philosophy. Now political philosophy is not characteristically ready to react promptly to the events of the day. It has got a long term perspective, and therefore has no intention to keep an eye on the headlines of the online news portals. It has got long term debits, which cannot be easily paid back in cash. And yet the claim of the paper is that in fact we are confronted by a state of affairs when political philosophy is obliged to take note of contemporary events. And it has to try to respond to those events almost “real time” or directly. We are aware of 4 million dead, by now, which is an unacceptable number. To tackle states of emergency parliaments are usually ready to offer exceptional measures for government action, even in parliamentary democracies. Yet politicians do not necessarily want to take on board the struggle with the virus – they can easily drop it out from the issues of the day –, claiming that public health should not be politicized. Yet by leaving the stage to let professional experts make the decisions, they give up their chance to unite the camp. Statesmen can only unite their camp behind them, if they make use of the window of opportunity opened by an emergency situation, and if they are able to make use of the phobias and anxieties of everyday people, in the fashionable populist, plebeian manner. The essay analyses two basic relationships influenced by the pandemic. One is claimed to be the intergovernmental, or global scene. Here, the great and developing powers are competing with each other, through the still mostly acceptable international norms of taking advantage of inequality. The other is the inner political scene, where there is a growing distrust between the authorities and the ordinary people, fuelled by restrictions, fake news, and forms either of controlling society by illegal means, or of influencing leaders by indirect means. The last part of the essay presents three major aspects from where one can analyse the happenings: a social, a communicational and an economic perspective on its effects. The essay finishes with some cautionary, sceptical notes on human nature, in order to keep vigilance in emergency situations on the loss of balance, either internal or external, to avoid the major dangers.

Schengen Borders and Multiple National States of Emergency: From Refugees to Terrorism to COVID-19

The re-introduction of intra-Schengen state border controls has been a constant feature of the area since the abolition of those controls in 1995. The seriousness of the controls introduced and the justifications which have been put forward for them have varied substantially. At the moment there are three overlapping regimes of temporarily reintroduced border controls in the area: those reintroduced to counter terrorism, those reintroduced to counter so-called secondary movements (the movement of people seeking international protection within the Schengen area) and those introduced to counter the spread of COVID-19. The article examines the three frameworks of temporary controls, the justifications provided by states using them for their operation, and the response of the EU institutions.

The Limited Role of the European Union in the Management and Governance of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Building on two global Symposia hosted by the Verfassungsblog and convened by the author, the 2020 “COVID-19 and States of Emergency” and the 2021 “Power and the COVID-19 Pandemic”, in addition to the findings of the Democracy Reporting International ‘Rule of Law Stress Test’ which surveyed EU Member States’ responses to the pandemic, this article investigates the impact of the pandemic on governance and legal systems within the EU, and evaluates the actions taken by EU institutions and national governments in response to the health crisis against the standards of the rule of law.

Effect of control measures on the pattern of COVID-19 Epidemics in Japan

Background COVID-19 has spread worldwide since its emergence in 2019. In contrast to many other countries with epidemics, Japan differed in that it avoided lockdowns and instead asked people for self-control. A travel campaign was conducted with a sizable budget, but the number of PCR tests was severely limited. These choices may have influenced the course of the epidemic. Methods The increase or decrease in the classes of SARS-CoV-2 variants was estimated by analyzing the published sequences with an objective multivariate analysis. This approach observes the samples in multiple directions, digesting complex differences into simpler forms. The results were compared over time with the number of confirmed cases, PCR tests, and overseas visitors. The kinetics of infection were analyzed using the logarithmic growth rate. Results The declared states of emergency failed to alter the movement of the growth rate. Three epidemic peaks were caused by domestically mutated variants. In other countries, there are few cases in which multiple variants have peaked. However, due to the relaxation of immigration restrictions, several infective variants have been imported from abroad and are currently competing for expansion, creating the fourth peak. By April 2021, these foreign variants exceeded 80%. The chaotic situation in Japan will continue for some time, in part because no effort has been made to identify asymptomatic carriers, and details of the vaccination program are undecided.

Human and Civil Rights and Freedoms in a State of Natural Disaster and Epidemic Emergency

On 11th March 2020, the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared a state of pandemic. In turn, on 21 March 2020, the Minister of Health, by way of a regulation, declared a state of epidemic in the territory of the Republic of Poland. At the same time, the decision resulted in the introduction of many restrictions concerning, inter alia, freedom of movement, assembly and trade. At the same time, discussions started on the constitutionality of the introduced restrictions on civil liberties. Having the above in mind, the aim of this article is to present the correlation in the sphere of limiting or suspending civil liberties in a state of emergency, such as a state of natural disaster, and in “non-emergency” states, such as a state of epidemic threat and a state of pandemic. Although the word “state” appears in the three mentioned legal situations, the state of natural disaster, as one of the three constitutional states of emergency, creates a different legal and socio-political situation than the state of epidemic threat or the state of pandemic. A common feature of the above-mentioned events, however, is that they became a fundamental disruption of the social context of individual and group functioning in connection with the occurrence of a human infectious disease.

The Temporal Constitution of Democracies

The specific institutionalization of time is a major defining element of democracies and a vulnerable condition of their stability and legitimacy. The first part of the chapter covers the regular temporal routines of democratic systems. In the synchronic dimension, it considers the time requirements of democratic practices and examines the timed relationship between different levels and actors of the democratic system. In the diachronic dimension, the chapter asks for the time horizons that temporal constitutions of democracies create for political actors—related to future expectations and to past experiences. The second part of the chapter turns to time challenges democracies face today. First, it addresses the issue of social acceleration that goes along with potential vulnerabilities and adaptabilities of democratic systems. Second, the chapter discusses problems created by situations of crisis in states of emergency and in democratic transitions. Based on that, the chapter draws some conclusions for future research.

Standardizing States of Emergency: Fragmented Legitimacy of Model Public Health Lawmaking

The promulgation of model laws—exemplary statutes that states can voluntarily choose to adopt—is a prominent strategy that reformers in public health agencies, the legal academy, and non governmental organizations use to improve US public health law and make it more uniform. This article applies the science and technology studies literature on standardization to the process of model lawmaking to analyze how developers negotiate between alternative forms of expertise and utilize different drafting processes to secure the techno-political legitimacy of their model statutes. Drawing on archival records and interviews with thirty-four experts involved in the development of four model public health laws produced between 1999 and 2007, I show how developers work to satisfy multiple, and, at times, competing, audiences. I observe that developers leveraged forms of legal expertise to secure their model laws’ technical legitimacy and emphasized their objectivity, representativeness, and flexibility to promote their political legitimacy. Comparing the four model laws across several indicia of legitimacy, I find that the developers experienced varying degrees of success. This study contributes to the socio legal scholarship on model laws by revealing how they are able to achieve legitimacy, albeit fragmented, even in the context of scientific uncertainty.