The terrorist attacks of 9/11 and, more recently, the COVID-19 pandemic presented liberal democracies with a profound challenge. In both cases, citizens readily accepted restrictions on fundamental rights – such as freedom of movement and association – in the name of national security or public health. For liberal theorists, these rights are core to a just political order, and their suspension raises difficult questions about the resilience of liberal democracy in moments of crisis.
Realist political philosophers have argued that such emergencies reveal a deeper truth: the values that liberals take to be foundational may not be as central in practice as they appear in theory. Liberals, by contrast, respond that restrictions are temporary and instrumental. Radical measures are necessary to protect core values in the long run. Yet with ongoing or “smouldering” crises, such as climate change, the question becomes more urgent: how long and to what extent can a community renege on fundamental rights before its democratic commitments are hollowed out? And how can citizens evaluate whether a government is legitimately curtailing rights, especially when ordinary democratic processes, such as parliamentary oversight or elections, are suspended?
Resolving these questions was the central objective of this MSCA project. My aim was to develop a realist theory of political emergencies: one that clarifies what crises reveal about our political values, and how citizens can assess the legitimacy of government authority under exceptional conditions. A secondary objective was to apply this framework to concrete cases – above all the COVID-19 pandemic, but also longer-term crises such as climate change. By integrating insights from political theory, philosophy, and jurisprudence, the project contributes both to academic debates on legitimacy and to the urgent societal need to understand how democracies can remain resilient in times of crisis.
