Emergency’s Challenges

The final chapter examines several of the overarching challenges that are raised by “emergencies,” regardless of specific contexts in which that term is invoked. It focuses on five types of general concerns, namely the normalization of the exception, the problematics of balancing between the competing values of security and liberty, the manipulability of the very use of the concept of “emergency” to frame a given situation or state of affairs, the “Us versus Them” character of emergency situations that, in turn, exacerbates some of the previously identified challenges, and the capacity to exercise international monitoring and supervision when a government declares a state of emergency.