Must Exceptionalism Prove the Rule? An Angle on Emergency Government in the History of Political Thought

Abstract

Discussions of the problem of emergency powers often assume that norms and exceptions constitute its conceptual structure. This perspective is both self-undermining and dangerous. Because even the critics of emergency powers often rely on this dichotomy, clarifying the conceptual terrain might contribute to the development of a safer approach to emergencies. Hence, this article explores the origins and logic of modern exceptionalism by examining instances of its careful articulation in the history of political thought: in the “republican” exceptionalism of Machiavelli and Rousseau and the “decisionist” exceptionalism of Schmitt and Hobbes.