Crisis and the Concentration of Power
Carl Schmitt, a provocative and controversial 20th-century German legal theorist, posed a deeply unsettling question about political authority: who gets to decide when the rules no longer apply? His answer became one of his most enduring—and dangerous—ideas: the state of exception. Schmitt argued that true sovereignty lies not in the administration of everyday laws, but in the power to suspend them. The sovereign is not the one who governs through procedure but the one who can declare an emergency and set the legal order aside.
This concept reframes power not as adherence to law, but as the ability to override it. In Schmitt’s view, the exception reveals the essence of sovereignty, because only in crisis does the real authority show itself—not in negotiation, but in decision. Far from seeing this as a weakness in constitutional systems, Schmitt believed it was their hidden reality. Liberal democracies, he argued, were often too slow, procedural, and divided to handle emergencies. In such moments, he believed, decisive leadership must trump legal restraint.
From Patriot Acts to Climate Emergencies
Schmitt’s theory isn’t confined to theory. It echoes through modern politics across ideological lines. After the attacks of September 11, 2001, the United States government—under a Republican administration—passed the Patriot Act, dramatically expanding surveillance capabilities and reducing checks on executive authority. These measures were defended as necessary, temporary responses to an extraordinary threat. Yet decades later, many of those powers remain.
On the other side of the political spectrum, the growing urgency surrounding the climate crisis has led some leaders and activists to propose emergency declarations that could enable governments to bypass legislative hurdles, limit fossil fuel production, and centralize authority in the name of environmental survival. These calls are not inherently authoritarian; they stem from a belief that the crisis is real, and the time to act is now. But the logic is familiar: the rules must be set aside so that action can occur.
Schmitt’s insight cuts through both examples. The moment when normal governance is suspended becomes a turning point, and the frequency with which it occurs determines whether democracy still governs, or whether the state of exception becomes the new norm.
The Risk of Normalized Emergency
The power to declare a crisis is not neutral—it carries with it the authority to transform the political landscape. What begins as an exception can become the permanent basis for rule, especially if the public accepts it as necessary. This is Schmitt’s deeper warning: once exception becomes routine, law is no longer the foundation of governance—decision is. Emergency powers that were once rare and extraordinary can, over time, become expected tools of political management.
The danger is not the existence of real crises—those are inevitable—but the use of crisis to bypass accountability and concentrate power. When crisis becomes the governing framework, politics shifts from collective deliberation to executive command. Legislation gives way to decree. Oversight gives way to urgency. In the name of survival, the structure of democratic process is quietly replaced.
Schmitt saw this not as a glitch in political systems, but as their hidden truth. What matters most, he argued, is who decides. Not who wins elections, not who passes laws, but who can name the emergency and act outside the law.
A Political Threshold, Not Just a Legal One
The state of exception is more than a legal mechanism—it is a threshold, a crossing point beyond which the nature of politics itself changes. In the short term, it may appear justified. But in the long term, it reshapes the relationship between the citizen and the state. What we accept as necessary today becomes the precedent for tomorrow. Each exception reinforces the idea that law is optional when power is urgent enough.
Schmitt’s ideas remain deeply controversial, not least because of how they were later used to justify authoritarian regimes. But their relevance lies in the uncomfortable questions they force us to confront. Who defines a crisis? Who decides when it ends? And how do we know when the tools of emergency have replaced the principles of law?
The real danger isn’t crisis itself—it’s how easily it becomes the justification for everything. Schmitt reminds us that when politics begins to live in a permanent state of exception, the rule of law becomes a formality, and sovereignty belongs not to the people, but to whoever controls the threshold.
