The ongoing recalibration of the state

Governments across the world have continued to enact their fallible decisions in a continuing atmosphere of change.

There’s no doubt that many arguments and discussions surrounding the nature of post-coronavirus society have taken afloat during this pandemic. The world as we know it could change forever, or this crisis could flutter away into the murky vapours of history. It has been most interesting to observe the responses from nations across the Anglosphere. Of chief concern to many, in Britain and abroad, are the government-imposed restrictions; restrictions which all citizens must abide by. While it is a given that a State of Emergency must be declared in times like these, what we are seeing – particularly in Britain, Australia and America – is the State of Exception kick in.

Here, we see the transformative elements of politics manifest itself in a brutish manner. One must be weary of the State of Exception, as it is exulted by those with despotic tendencies as an opportunistic form of control. The German political theorist Carl Schmitt is an illustration of those of this ilk; the distasteful Nazi philosopher is generally credited with the term. To the mind of Schmitt, no system is truly equipped to neutralise the consequences of a catastrophe. With this underlying premise, he comes to the conclusion that the prevailing institutions which prop-up the State must be subverted in order to effectively combat disaster. Hardly an acute course of change, the State of Exception sees that State power is maximised, which makes curious relationship with the institutions that impregnate it. In the context of a nation like Britain, this means discarding the great pillars of jurisprudence that hold such a system to standard; the rule of law, the presumption of innocence, democratic scrutiny and habeas corpus are all put on hold. This is precisely what we’re seeing during this pandemic.

Australia, an inheritor of the British parliamentary system, is undergoing its own exceptional changes. The Australian government recently instituted measures in an attempt to contain the spread of COVID-19 with an almost contemptuous disregard for its common law. Those who return from overseas travel are detained in hotel facilities against their will for 14 days, and such measures laugh in the face of notions of law-ensured liberty the Commonwealth has sought to perpetuate.

Criticisms of the detainment of otherwise innocent Australian citizens have since waned into a whisper across the nation; evidently Australians are less concerned with the shredding of their constitution than their American counterparts. Much less surprisingly, parliamentary sittings have been suspended, an act which is mandated through constitutional convention but is most curiously unconventional in times of disaster for Australia. While Prime Minister Scott Morrison has incongruously revoked this decision on a temporary account, the customary parliamentary schedule has been abandoned. This is the State of Exception in action, and most people are blind to it.

In a typically conspicuous fashion, the American narrative runs coarsely against the Australian state of affairs. Entire cities and districts are in uproar over the curtailment of the basic freedoms ensured to the American citizenry by their constitution. Many see the active lockdown measures as a violation of these freedoms, yet such claims are cloaked by the puerile nature of some protests. Perhaps said claims are blind to the concept of a state of emergency, but they do possess the weight of legitimacy when confronted with protest bans. A multitude of States across America have already moved to introduce legislation that would effectively ban protests against the fossil fuel industry during the pandemic, and now the Executive is taking matters into its own hands.

A police department in North Carolina dispersed a small protest, arresting one person in the process. If the initial decision to arrest did not alarm many, it was the subsequent claim from the police department that “protesting is a non-essential activity”, which did. What is effectively taking place here is a de facto ban on public scrutiny; a move which takes a sledgehammer to the democratic ideals that fortify the halls of Congress. Notwithstanding the imperative First Amendment concerns addressing the right to freedom of association, it’s important to observe how municipal authorities conduct themselves when this State of Exception is in effect. The police have appointed themselves adjudicators of all movement, deeming certain activities as non-essential when they see fit. Such hawkish behaviour is no stranger to American authority, yet there is something decidedly pernicious about a subliminal Police State. Even more damming is the fact that the police have ignored the advice of North Carolina’s American Civil Liberties Union legal director, who claimed that “Enforcement of emergency orders should not exacerbate racial disparities and should not lead to custodial arrest unless doing so is the last resort, because arresting people and sending them to jail is antithetical to public health”.

Britain’s own policing woes are not uncommon either. Instances of police overreach have taken place in counties across the nation, including a case in which the Derbyshire police force flew drones over public walking spaces. What is so curious about this form of policing is that it is designed on a model of suggestion rather than a form of legitimate authority – that is, forms of authority derived from law and democracy. When the government suggests measures for ensuring the suppression of the virus, the police interpret them as a mandate to hoodwink the public into uncritically abiding by these suggestions. It is as if the general population is working for the police under the pretext of indentured servitude, compelled to abide by their whims at any given moment. The Police State is in full-swing, it seems. Perhaps this is what occurs when the police forget the precepts of the very institution which they belong to; the police force is traditionally regarded – as its founding Peelian principles had conceived it – as a body of “citizens in uniform”. Such a recalibration of the nature of British policing, inspired by government-mandated carelessness, mocks the nature of British society as we have known it for well over a century.

Aggravating the tendrils of this monster of political recalibration is the manner in which the government itself is run. While some measures are obviously necessary, it is intriguing to see Boris Johnson and his cabinet allow such rigorous changes take hold. While some changes are welcome – such as Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak’s unique £65 billion-pound stimulus package – some are dancing on the precipice of absurdity. Johnson’s blind insistence on following expert advice at the early stages of this crisis is no exception. The problem here is that blindly following supposedly authoritative sources creates its own issues; there is room for debate on which measures should be taken to reduce harm to the population. The experts themselves can’t effectively come to a conclusion on this issue; incidentally, many countries across the continents have parted in their responses. Consensus or not, it is unwise to follow the advice of experts if all considerations haven’t been addressed. Medical advisors are seldom, if ever, experts on law, the constitution, the delegation of authority, social issues, the economy and a multitude of other factors that most governments have to consider. Even in times of crisis, it appears that expertise, no matter how shrewd, is not suited to government.

Nevertheless, governments across the world have continued to enact their fallible decisions in a continuing atmosphere of change. Core to this ongoing narrative is the idea that the state of emergency – which we’re so accustomed to accepting – is becoming overlapped by the state of exception, possibly recalibrating the State itself in the process. Could we be bearing witness to a Hegelian dialectic cycle of history, where we observe a clash between opposing ideologies, with all of its lasting effects? Or are we simply wading through a temporary state of paralysis where even the fundamental pillars of our societies are put on hold? Only time can tell.