The Pandemic and the Political: Some Reflections on the (Reflexive) State

Crises are characterized by a serious threat, accompanied by high levels of uncertainty and an urgent need for action. The current pandemic has created such a context of fundamental uncertainty in which the ability to interpret the signs and anticipate future events in order to fully maintain the scope of action has been put under serious stress. Critical junctures allow to analyze how societies and state organizations are able to react to economic, legal, social and political challenges and to monitor how they transform their established practices in different spheres “in its making”.

As other disruptive events, such as the financial and economic crisis (2007-2012), the “EU refugee protection crisis” (since 2015), accelerated effects of global warming and now the COVID-19 pandemic, despite their different temporalities, bring to the fore the vulnerability of a world that is connected in manifold ways. Indeed, there are sudden events, such as 9/11, which have had a dramatic impact on mobility and migratory regulations, introducing a new “securitarian” paradigm. Other risks, such as global warming, have long-term effects on migration but produce only slow political action. Disruptive, unexpected crises as COVID-19, test the existing models of human mobility with all its ambivalences and can trigger a decisionist moment in politics. There is little doubt that the issuing of travel bans, curfews and other ‘curtailment’ measures, currently witnessed around the world and the partial re-opening of borders, have profound implications on how, when and where human beings move (see Blog Contribution Lorenzo Piccoli).

Great Solidarity Rebooted

People who are on the move for whatever reason, such as commuters, workers, tourists or refugees, have been particularly at risk under the current state of exception implemented by various countries. Several legal experts have highlighted the inconstancies of the only serious, although unaccomplished “post-national” actor of our times, the European Union (Hruschka 2020, Thym 2020). In fear of the virus, European achievements, such as regional cooperation and the free mobility regime, entrenched in an increasing codification across borders, were sacrificed at lightning speed, at least temporarily. For all its disastrous effects, the pandemic offered Europe the opportunity to recalibrate some of its values and to address the message, that without health, all is nothing, but it also highlighted that solidarity as valued today is strongly bound by borders. It reminds us of Ernest Renan’s famous definition of 1882: “A nation is therefore the expression of a great solidarity, constituted by the feeling of common sacrifices made and those that one is still disposed to make. (…) A nation’s existence is a daily plebiscite, just as an individual’s existence is a perpetual affirmation of life” (Renan 2018). The handling of the current sacrifice has thrown all states back on their own resources.

The European Commission failed to take the lead in addressing and coordinating concerted action, but also because several member states were not disposed to do so. Near is my shirt, but nearer is my skin. The tough truth is that, in this emergency, the idea of a common “we” has shrunk. In the past, only when a strong institution took the lead in concerting common responses, trust in coordinated action was implemented. We remember the famous statement, “the ECB is ready to do whatever it takes to preserve the Euro. And believe me, it will be enough” (Mario Draghi 2012). So, while many countries stopped exporting protective medical gear, China, Russia and Cuba sent medical teams, ventilators and masks to various suffering EU countries, marketing the alleged efficiency of their autocratic political systems. Meanwhile, the great European project seems heavily shattered. While we may mourn this situation, this can also mean a new beginning. More than before, common problems, not common values, may bridge solidarity among European nations.

The Rise of Reflexive States

The state supported by epidemiologists took the lead in defining the state of exception, to assure public health and the maintenance of (re-)productivity during the current crisis. Seen from a liberal perspective, this may be the way to secure and develop future potentials. However, according to a totalitarian understanding, a state of exception may incline to create and reinforce hierarchies of exclusion. Therefore, in view of Europe’s historical experience, it is essential not to lose sight of the tension between freedom and security, particularly when fundamental rights are restricted. In moments of existential crises, what defines legitimacy is the largest possible scope of action to protect individuals, “whatever it takes.” Consequently, all liberal states have inscribed in their constitutions mechanisms to assure the executive the capacity to intervene in moments of extreme crisis. The objective of such measures is to reconduct society as soon as possible to a state of normality. But as in military conflicts, it is easy to enter a war, but very difficult to get out. Abuses during the state of exception are not uncommon, since the temptation to enlarge executive powers cannot be denied, if checks and balances are missing. The most prominent example is Turkey after the attempted coup d’état in 2016. Beside the imprisonment of thousands of alleged conspirators, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan continued to prolong the state of exception and transformed a semi-presidential, representative-democratic republic into an autocratic presidential democracy. The temptation to abuse power is strong, particularly in political systems, where friend/enemy-dichotomies are prevalent, the sovereign is who decides on the state of exception, as Carl Schmitt once stated.

But does this description also reflect the realities of long-established liberal democracies? During the pandemic, we observed, at least in Western European countries, such as Switzerland, a reflexive decision-making process steadily supported by continuously gathered scientific insights. In different countries, we could see a research-policy nexus that included not only virologists, economists and lawyers, but also social scientists. We witnessed reflexive states that continued to be accountable to the public, with governments that mediated different spheres of knowledge and adjusted their decisions permanently. The ultimate goal was to prevent overloading the health care system, which would have obliged us to decide who would be justified to survive. The will to avoid an ethically unsustainable situation in which the value of “bare lives” (Agamben 1998) would have had to be defined politically, explains the large support for the measures taken.

Liberty or Safety?

However, in this battle for the cultural hegemony to determine the significance of the pandemic, another argumentation has gained popularity: the assumptions on the political right (and in a certain left), that state interventions are ruled by a hidden agenda of big government, media and scientists. In their skeptical view, all these actors are trying to incite panic over the virus. They interpret public safety measures put in place to slow the spread as totalitarian impulses. In a brilliant piece on the politicization of the SARS-CoV-2, Fintan O’Toole (2020) detects two contradictory impulses within the right-wing-mindset: paranoia and risk. The right appeals to the fear of invasion, subversion and contamination, while valorizing risk. In the US, Trumpism tried to ride both horses. The paranoia addresses the ‘little people.’ Their ‘way of life’ is displayed as being under threat (from Muslims, Mexicans, liberals, socialists, etc.), and they can only be saved by the Savior. The embrace of risk speaks to the beneficiaries of neo-liberal tax reforms. In this attitude prevails Benjamin Franklin’s assertion that “those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” According to this mindset, which emphasizes deservingness at its core concept, freedom comes at a price of severe sacrifice, namely the sacrifice of those who are anyway “losers,” and do not deserve to be saved. Crisis are therefore not collective experiences that can bring citizens together. On the contrary, they separate winners from the so-called losers of a “lesser bread.” Although missing real-world bite, this trope of nativist, social-Darwinist propaganda, once installed in government, is able to make a profit in times of plague and address with its toxic cure an ideology of exclusion, which is the real challenge to a democratic, liberal polity during and after a state of exception.

Gianni D’Amato is the Director of the nccr – on the move, Project Leader of the project Mobility, Diversity, and the Democratic Welfare State: Contested Solidarity in Historical and Political Comparative Perspective, and professor in history at the University of Neuchâtel.

References:

– Agamben, Giorgio (1998). Homo Sacer. Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
– Draghi, Mario (2012), Speech at the Global Investment Conference in London, 26 July 2012.
– Dzankic, Jelena and Lorenzo Piccoli (2020). Coronavirus: citizenship infected, in: Globalcit.eu.
– Hruschka, Constantin (2020). The Pandemic Kills also the European Solidarity, in: eumigrationlawblog.eu.
– O’Toole, Fintan (2020). Vector in Chief, in: New York Review of Books, LXVII(8), 20-22.
– Renan, Ernest (1882/2018). What Is a Nation? and Other Political Writings. New York: Columbia University Press
– Schmitt, Carl (1985). Political Theology, Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
– Thym, Daniel (2020). Travel Bans in Europe: A Legal Appraisal, in: eumigrationlawblog.eu/.