Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic has not only caused millions to die and even more to lose their jobs, it has also prompted more governments to simultaneously declare a state of emergency than ever before enabling us to compare their decisions more directly. States of emergency usually imply the extension of executive powers that diminishes the powers of other branches of government, as well as to the civil liberties of individuals. Here, we analyze the use of emergency provisions during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic and find that it can be largely explained by drawing on political economy. It does, hence, not constitute an exception. We show that many governments have (mis-)used the pandemic as a pretext to curtail media freedom. We further show that executive decrees are considered as a substitute for states of emergency by many governments.
Highlights
By May 10, 2020, 99 governments, equal to almost precisely half of all sovereign governments, had declared a state of emergency (SOE) due to COVID-19.1 The Italian government was the first to declare an SOE on January 31, 2020 and many other governments followed suit during March 2020
We propose to change that here based on the conjecture that governments having at their disposal far-reaching executive decree powers have fewer reasons to resort to SOEs, ceteris paribus
We first analyze the factors that lead governments to declare an SOE before turning to the question of whether declaring an SOE has any effects on the number of recorded events against journalists
Summary
By May 10, 2020, 99 governments, equal to almost precisely half of all sovereign governments, had declared a state of emergency (SOE) due to COVID-19.1 The Italian government was the first to declare an SOE on January 31, 2020 and many other governments followed suit during March 2020. Between 1985 and 2014, the governments of at least 137 countries declared a state of emergency at least once (Bjørnskov & Voigt, 2018a based on updated data from Hafner-Burton et al, 2011) This number – spread over a period of 30 years - appears almost dwarfish compared to the current wave, which occurred in less than four months. As virtually all countries were affected by the SARS-CoV-2 virus at approximately the same time, governments were all fighting the virus, and their responses can be compared This is akin to a natural experiment and constitutes a very rare setting enabling us to compare the determinants of declaring an SOE across virtually all countries in the world.
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