Emergency, Liberalism, and the State

Abstract

Outside the Law: Emergency and Executive Power. By Clement Fatovic. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009. 368p. $55.00.Emergency Politics: Paradox, Law, Democracy. By Bonnie Honig. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009. 218p. $26.95.States of Emergency in Liberal Democracies. By Nomi Claire Lazar. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009. 190p. $80.00.In the wake of 9/11, many political scientists and theorists in the United States of America turned their attention to the topic of emergencies. That required them to confront a fundamental question: Are emergencies to be studied as important in their own right, as altogether exceptional events that threaten the very existence of a society in unforeseeable ways? Or are they important, not because they are radically distinct from the normal situation of politics, but because they bring to the surface otherwise implicit aspects of normal politics?