Background: Contemporary constitutionalism, shaped largely in the post-World War II era, was designed primarily for peacetime. As a result, neither constitutional theory nor practice provides clear answers to questions arising when societies and states face extraordinary situations such as armed conflict, hybrid threats, or terrorism — circumstances that pit state survival against the foundational principles of limited government and guaranteed rights.

Purpose: This article aims to examine how constitutionalism transforms under extraordinary circumstances, particularly martial law, and to identify a viable legal pathway for Ukraine's return to ordinary constitutional order following the termination or lifting of the martial law regime.

Methodology: The study employs an axiological approach, treating constitutionalism not as a static construct but as a dynamic system of values, principles, institutions, and procedures. This framework enables analysis of the relative weight of constitutional principles across varying socio-political circumstances, including crisis conditions.

Results: Under extraordinary circumstances, constitutionalism does not give rise to a distinct or parallel constitutional order — its core identity remains intact. What occurs instead is a temporary shift in the relative significance of key principles: public safety, stability, and statehood come to the foreground, while certain human rights are subject to proportionate restrictions and the rule of law is applied with due regard for the exceptional situation. After overcoming the crisis, the need arises to reassess the relative significance of these principles. The article proposes a dedicated transitional legal regime — positioned between martial law and ordinary peacetime regulation, and conceptualized as a specific instance of a state of emergency — to ensure a gradual and effective return to constitutional normalcy.

Conclusion: Constitutionalism retains its identity even under the most extreme conditions, provided that power remains bound by law. The concept of a transitional legal regime offers a practically grounded mechanism for post-war constitutional recovery, with particular relevance for Ukraine's legal and institutional reconstruction after the lifting of martial law.

The large-scale deportation of non-citizens has become a preeminent policy issue. Unfortunately, executive curtailment of immigrant communities’ liberty is not without historical parallels. During World War II, federal officials sent individuals of Japanese descent to internment camps through a series of executive orders and military proclamations. Although attorneys in the Department of Justice believed aspects of these actions were unconstitutional at the time, the administration prevailed at the nation’s highest court. Can recognition of this past wrong aid challenges to contemporary immigration enforcement regimes? How do our courts formally account for the most egregious jurisprudential errors of the past, and endeavor to avoid repeating them? This Article examines the ways in which courts have discussed Korematsu v. United States in the context of immigration arrests and detention. It also provides a comprehensive review of substantive citations to Korematsu since it was overturned in Trump v. Hawaii. The abrogation of Korematsu buttresses the decision’s utility as a negative precedent, and I endeavor to ground the relevance of overturned precedent within normative theories of constitutional interpretation. Through this analysis, I highlight significant similarities between the internment of Japanese Americans and the rhetoric surrounding immigration policy today. In this context, judicial condemnation of Korematsu underscores certain due process requirements for individualized hearings and suggests the need for greater scrutiny of the executive’s emergency powers.

Aim

This paper examines the interplay between political actors in different levels of government (i.e. from local to national) during the COVID-19 pandemic, using the framework of medical populism.

Subjects and methods

Three case studies illustrate how subnational political actors in the Philippines deployed medical-populist tactics to assert their leadership and challenge national policies: (1) Cebu Governor Gwendolyn Garcia’s promotion of “tuob” or steam inhalation during the early months of the pandemic; (2) two congressmen’s endorsement of ivermectin in Metro Manila during the country’s worst COVID surge; and (3) Former Manila Mayor Isko Moreno’s opposition to the national face shield mandate in the period leading up to the 2022 presidential elections.

Results

By spectacularizing the crisis, forwarding knowledge claims, and forging divisions between ordinary people and the so-called elite establishments of government and health authorities, these actors were able to either speak over scientific evidence or help contradict policies that were not backed by solid evidence to begin with.

Conclusion

This paper highlights the plural manifestations of medical populism in a given country, beyond just national leaders, as well as the evolving dynamics between national and local governments (and political actors) amidst health crises.

The exercise of exceptional power has long been at the centre of debate, as the process involves essentially breaking away from normality and giving political leader(s), especially the executive, almost unlimited power. Particularly in periods of constitutionalism and under liberal democracies based on checks and balances, when the principle of the separation of powers is temporarily ‘switched off’ for the time needed to avert an exceptional event, this leads to significant problems. This paper, after clarifying the theoretical starting points, will discuss in a historical context the authoritarian tendencies inherent in executive power that emerged within the history of ideas and politics in the 20th century in relation to the problem of constitutional dictatorship and which have today taken shape in the transformation of philosophies of government – namely, into a kind of permanent crisis-management philosophy of government. Furthermore, in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, the literature is reviewed to address the democratic problems associated with exceptional governance. The main question underlying this analysis is whether exceptional governance affects democracy and legal systems and what tools and methods can be used to check the authoritarian nature of the executive in a state of exception.

Russia’s systematic deportation and transfer of Ukrainian children from occupied territories since 2014 is a central instrument of Russian governance. This article conceptualises the abduction of children as politicised captivity – the state-directed, long-term custodial control of a vulnerable population segment for explicitly political ends. The removal of children serves the strategic goals of exerting coercive pressure on local families, disrupting Ukrainian identity transmission, and facilitating demographic restructuring. Drawing on Foucault’s ‘biopolitics’ and Agamben’s ‘state of exception’, we analyse how institutional and legal mechanisms, from ‘recreation’ camps to streamlined adoption decrees, are employed to seize control over the identity formation and future political subjectivity of minors. Empirical findings, derived from witness testimonies and interviews, detail the operational pathways of transfer (e.g., filtration, holiday schemes) and the resulting experiences of psychological trauma, educational disruption, and ideological indoctrination. We argue that by targeting children, Russian authorities employ a sophisticated form of biopolitical control that is fundamental to maintaining and legitimising their long-term authority in contested spaces.

ISSE Comment: This article aligns closely with ISSE’s underlying inquiry into how exceptional forms of power are converted into durable techniques of rule. At one level, it documents grave abuses against Ukrainian children; at a deeper level, it shows how those abuses are embedded within an administrative, legal, and ideological apparatus designed to consolidate authority in occupied territory. That is precisely the kind of transformation ISSE seeks to examine: the movement from emergency or wartime justification to routinized governance. The article is especially valuable in showing that the relevant question is not only whether a violation occurred, but how coercive practices are institutionalized through decrees, custody systems, educational policy, demographic engineering, and narratives of “protection” or “rescue.” In ISSE’s framework, this is a revealing case of the exception becoming normalized, where extraordinary interventions into family life, identity, and legal status are made to appear administratively ordinary.

The piece also speaks directly to ISSE’s broader concern with the relationship between sovereignty, legality, and political subject formation. Its use of biopolitics, the state of exception, and necropolitics helps illuminate how modern systems of control operate not only through overt repression, but through the management of populations, the reordering of legal protections, and the attempted remaking of future citizens. By focusing on children, the article identifies one of the most consequential sites of long-term political struggle: the shaping of memory, belonging, and national continuity across generations. For ISSE, this makes the article important not simply as an account of wartime abuse, but as an analysis of how state power seeks to reconstitute social and political reality itself, through the capture of vulnerable populations, the suspension or distortion of legal constraint, and the strategic use of administrative systems to transform exceptional domination into an enduring order.

This article examines the problem of state violence and institutional impunity in Pakistan through a close textual analysis of Fatima Bhutto’s memoir “The Hour of the Wolf.” It argues that political violence in Pakistan is not an institutional failure but a recurring mode of governance in which law is selectively suspended, accountability is indefinitely deferred, and death is symbolically managed through public narratives of martyrdom. To conceptualize this process, the article develops an original theoretical framework, the Exception-Martyrdom Apparatus, by integrating Giorgio Agamben’s notion of the state of exception with Judith Butler’s theory of grievability. Drawing on sustained close readings of the memoir, the study demonstrates how violence is administratively coordinated, how impunity is produced through delay and silence, and how martyrdom functions as a form of political eyewash that substitutes moral reverence for justice. Rather than offering narrative closure, “The Hour of the Wolf” exposes the structural conditions that allow political killing to persist without accountability. The article positions the memoir as a critical counter-archive of state power and contributes to South Asian Studies by reframing impunity as governance rather than breakdown.

Abstract: Recent UK legislative reform has further empowered the UK Executive, degrading horizontal and vertical constraints on powers interfering with human rights, and this has largely taken place via the ‘back door’ through repeated marginalisation of Parliament. Between 2021 and 2023, 11 pieces of primary legislation were given Royal Assent which narrowed Executive accountability mechanisms in relation to coercive and administrative powers identified as weakening human rights protections by the Joint Committee on Human Rights. Echoing both recent and long-standing trends in UK law-making, such reform has been sent through Parliament while employing mechanisms of parliamentary marginalisation, undermining the ability of parliamentarians and broader civil society to scrutinise the changes. The passing of a constitutionally significant group of legislation in this manner created a ‘back door’ through which the UK Executive was able to expand its powers with minimal scrutiny. Such backdoor Executive empowerment supports scholarship highlighting the lack of firm UK constitutional constraints of the Executive. While the paper’s analysis does not make a claim on the overall status of UK democracy, it does argue that the recent legal reform mirrors dynamics identified with respect to democratic erosion, suggesting the need for further assessment of the UK’s democratic health.

ISSE Comment: Unlike the constitutional structure of the United States, which is defined by three formally separate and co-equal branches, the United Kingdom operates under a parliamentary system within a constitutional monarchy, where the Government is drawn from and dependent upon a majority in Parliament. In principle, this fusion of executive and legislative authority is designed to ensure political accountability and coherence, avoiding the institutional deadlock that can arise in presidential systems when different branches are controlled by opposing parties. The loss of parliamentary confidence can rapidly dissolve a government and trigger new elections, reinforcing this model of political responsibility. At the same time, this structure affords the Government significant control over the legislative agenda, often to a degree not seen in more rigidly separated systems.

Against this institutional backdrop, Lock’s analysis in Backdoor Executive Empowerment identifies a concerning evolution in legislative practice. She argues that, notwithstanding the Government’s already substantial procedural advantages, recent reforms have increasingly relied on mechanisms that marginalize parliamentary scrutiny, such as compressed legislative timetables and constrained debate, to facilitate the passage of controversial measures, particularly those expanding executive authority and weakening accountability safeguards. While these practices do not invoke formal emergency powers or states of exception, they reflect a functionally analogous dynamic: the incremental reconfiguration of constitutional constraints through procedural means that operate below the threshold of overt crisis. In this sense, the trend raises broader questions central to ISSE’s work, namely, how exceptional forms of governance can emerge not only through declared emergencies, but through the gradual normalization of practices that diminish oversight, transparency, and democratic deliberation.

This paper argues that liberal authoritarianism – defined here as a liberal technique of government fusing authoritarianism with liberalism for the purpose of the ‘free market’, following Hermann Heller – corresponds a form of dual constitutionalism or fragmented legality. Dual constitutionalism, originally a colonial technique of governance, relies on a liberal constitution enshrining a state of exception which suspends it on specific matters, territories, and during certain times. It can be either military – called in France the ‘state of siege’, the continental version of the British Martial Law – or civilian – the ‘state of emergency’. In the case of France, liberal authoritarianism has witnessed several declinations since the French Revolution, flourishing in the liberal colonialism of the late 19th century, then the full-fledged liberal authoritarianism of the interwar period, and eventually in the neoliberal authoritarianism of the 4th and 5th republic. Focusing on the relationship between France and its Algerian colony during the Third Republic (1870–1940), one of the most liberal periods ever in French history, it documents how the State of Exception was used to establish a legalised state of dictatorship where all executive, legislative and judicial powers were vested in the hands of a governor, in order to force the creation of markets by breaking down collective land ownership and use and other non-liberal economic customs of the local population, using, in particular, the legal tool of the ‘sequestre’ which allowed the State to forcibly expropriate land and seize assets of the local population without compensation, forced labour and internment camps – all in order to incentivize ‘free enterprise’ by the colonizers. Many of these legal tools and techniques migrated back to the metropolis when the Third Republic officially dissolved into a Nazi State in 1940, through legal means and in accordance with the constitutional procedures of the Third Republic.

By examining the intersection of technocracy, globalism, and the increasing weight of emergencies in decision-making processes, the paper presents and discusses the concept of emergenciocracy, a governance framework that normalizes the use of emergencies as a structural and rhetorical tool to manage crises. The analysis situates emergenciocracy within the broader context of the ongoing polycrisis—the convergence of ecological, health, economic, and geopolitical crises—arguing that this framework generates a departure from traditional democratic norms. Emergencies, initially framed as temporary deviations, have evolved (and will evolve) into sustained modes of governance, consolidating authority while bypassing deliberative processes: this is not only referred to biopolitics as postulated by Agamben but especially to political opportunity structures, implying the risk to increase socio-economic inequality. Moving in particular from energy and climate issues, I highlight the role of technocratic expertise and centralized transnational governance in shaping responses to crises, criticizing the depoliticization of public discourse through the fetishization of technical solutions, which often marginalize alternative epistemologies and community-driven initiatives.

An important aspect being explored is also the complex role of grassroots movements in legitimizing emergenciocratic practices. While such movements advocate for urgent action on critical issues related to social and environmental justice, their reliance on emergency rhetoric may inadvertently reinforce top-down governance structures.

The political rhetoric surrounding the Horn of Africa is perpetually framed through narratives of crisis, tragedy and emergency. These labels, rather than simply being used to describe instability, function as tools of governance to normalise dysfunction and entrench cycles of dependency. Drawing on postcolonial frameworks, the discourse interrogates how such crisis narratives obscure and ignore structural issues. Further, this sustains and promotes external authority, often rooted in colonial narratives of the region. The exploration of case studies, Somalia and South Sudan, highlighting how international interventions, often framed as peacebuilding or humanitarian efforts, reinforce the very ‘crisis’ it aims to address. The solution to decolonise this paradigm created by western interventionist economies lies in alternatives grounded in African epistemologies of governance that centre local sovereignty. In doing so, reimagining governance beyond ‘emergency’, towards sustainable political autonomy, rooted in localised political power, emerges as the primary, if not only, viable solution.

ISSE Comment: This article is included on the ISSE website because it examines the treatment of fundamental rights within the broader context of armed conflict and emergency governance. Although it does not focus on the formal exercise of emergency powers, it provides a detailed analysis of how freedom of political expression is regulated, limited, and justified during periods of heightened security concern, and in this instance, under martial law. The study contributes to ISSE’s research agenda by illuminating how international legal standards, domestic legal frameworks, and institutional practices interact under crisis conditions, offering valuable insight into the protection of democratic rights during and beyond emergencies.

Abstract: The article is devoted to a comprehensive study of the right to freedom of expression of political views during armed conflict. It examines the nature of this right as one of the fundamental elements of a democratic society, defines its content, functions, international legal guarantees, and national mechanisms for its realization and limitation. Given the ongoing armed aggression against Ukraine, the issue of the permissible limits of state interference in freedom of expression under the pretext of national security protection has become particularly relevant. The article analyzes the norms of international law, including the provisions of Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), recommendations of the Council of Europe, and the positions of the OSCE, the United Nations, and leading international organizations such as ARTICLE 19 and CPJ. Special attention is given to the case law of the European Court of Human Rights, which establishes key approaches to the protection of political expression even under crisis conditions. The study presents a number of real-life examples from the Ukrainian context, such as the blocking of media outlets by decisions of the National Security and Defense Council, illegal surveillance of journalists, administrative pressure on editorial offices, and increased self-censorship under martial law. These phenomena are analyzed in terms of their compliance with the Constitution of Ukraine and international legal standards. It is determined that the existing legal protection mechanisms are insufficient or ineffective, which threatens the democratic balance of power during wartime. The author proposes a set of specific measures to maintain the balance between security needs and freedom of expression, including the harmonization of national legislation with international standards, the creation of independent institutions to monitor restrictions on freedom of speech, the enhancement of legal and physical protection for journalists, the development of digital and media literacy among the population, as well as cooperation with technology platforms to ensure transparent content blocking procedures. It is concluded that the right to freedom of expression of political views plays no less important a role during wartime than in peacetime: it serves as a safeguard against authoritarianism, an indicator of governmental legitimacy, and a foundation for the post-war democratic reconstruction of the state. Ignoring this dimension not only violates Ukraine’s international obligations but also poses a threat to internal political stability in the context of national recovery.

The aim of this article is to problematize one of the most audacious tenets of the new consensus, namely the revolutionary character of fascism, by linking together the experience of the state of siege and the emergence of the fascist movement in interwar Romania. It tries to do so by drawing on the philosophical underpinnings of the paradigm of the state of exception developed by Giorgio Agamben and Walter Benjamin’s critique of law and violence. In a first part my aim is to present the main arguments espoused in defending the view according to which fascist movements were professing an authentic revolutionary radical politics. Secondly, I will turn towards legal critique and to the work of Giorgio Agamben in order to build a topography of the relation between law and the force of state. In a third part I will focus on the uses and the historical meaning of the state of siege in post-First World War Romania. This article argues that the emergence of the fascist movement in Romania is an event strongly embedded in the political, legal and symbolic dynamics entailed by the state of exception rather than the expression of a revolutionary thrust.

When living in a time of crisis, it becomes easy to forget that our institutions have been through crisis before. That our institutions are still here and operating today is a testament to the fact that they are, on some meaningful level, resilient to incredible strain. This is, in large part, because they were designed to operate under this strain. While the Framers of the Constitution were undoubtedly working to build a government that operated effectively on a day-to-day basis, they were also preoccupied with creating a structure that could withstand extreme pressure, respond to threats, correct its own errors, and survive to work for the general welfare of the American people in the long run. One element of the constitutional design central to this resiliency is the availability of vast emergency powers to use in response to exceptional threats. Of course, no system is perfect, and no matter the intentions of the Framers, as American civilization has developed and expanded, so too has the complexity of our society and governmental structure. If the SARS-Cov-2 pandemic has shown anything, it is that there is great disagreement as to what the theoretical and actual limits of federal emergency powers are and ought to be.

“Emergency” is, of course, a very difficult legal concept to define and analyze, not least because it implicates an endless range of topics, from the very broad to the very specific. Emergency, and especially extreme and existential emergency, interacts with fundamental  principles as the basis of sovereignty itself and the very nature of government and the state—if a government cannot adequately protect its people from a crisis, that government is not likely to survive. Still, as with any legal principle, the principle must be made to function in the real world, whether it be through constitutions, both written and implied, or through more mundane and routine statutory law. Complicating any analysis of emergency and emergency powers even further, there is not only no agreement on what precisely an emergency is or ought to be, but there is also no theoretical end to the nature and type of possible emergencies that could arise, especially as society continues to develop and grow ever more complex.

It is essential to begin any analysis of federal emergency power in the United States by understanding the theoretical, constitutional, and statutory bases for such powers, the history of the use of such powers, and where the law stands today. In an attempt to aid in this understanding, this Note will explore the theoretical and constitutional basis for federal emergency power, arguing first that the conception of federal emergency powers in the United States Constitution is best understood as expansive and flexible, and second, that the primary, though not exclusive, functional limits to this power are the protections found within the structural portion of the Constitution, namely separation of powers and the political process. This Note will then turn to how the statutory law of emergency functions and has developed under the constitutional structure, arguing that, while the constitutional framework for handling emergencies lays out a strong and flexible structure for addressing emergency, the statutory law of emergency which has subsequently grown underneath the constitutional structure contain many concerning faults in implementation.

This article examines Nayib Bukele's leadership and his revolutionary government style in El Salvador, emphasising the convergence of stringent security policies, criminal populism, and digital political communication. Bukele's administration has realised a significant reduction in homicide and gang-related violence, chiefly through the enforcement of a prolonged State of Exception and the establishment of the Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT), a vast prison epitomising total state authority. Utilising ideas of authoritarian populism, penal governance, and digital populism, the research examines how Bukele reinterprets legitimacy, transitioning it from democratic processes to performance-oriented results. By employing charismatic leadership and an advanced social media approach, Bukele has circumvented traditional institutions, centralised authority, and established a direct emotional bond with the populace. Although some Salvadorans rejoice in the restoration of safety and order, detractors caution against the deterioration of legal protections, judicial autonomy, and civil liberties. The report underscores a paradox: Bukele's popularity increases concurrently with the erosion of democratic standards. The study contends that although Bukele's model provides immediate stability and encourages regional imitation, it poses significant concerns regarding the sustainability of security attained through democratic erosion and institutional exceptionalism.

This article seeks to capture the transformative potential of emergency powers, as a legal–political practice pertaining to liberal legality that ultimately can determine constitutional change, rather than a return to ‘normality’. It does so by providing an analysis of the transition from formal and limited liberal legality in Romania to the series of dictatorships that followed the instauration of the regime of royal dictatorship of King Carol II in 1938. Anchored in a close reading of the archival documents of the trial of the leader of the main far right movement, Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, and the subsequent legal proceedings, the proposed article aims to produce revaluation of the jurisprudential and constitutional status of the regime of King Carol II with a view of understanding the emergency-based dimension of this rule and the particular shift it operated foundational legal categories in criminal and constitutional law. I proceed by examining the current theoretical limitations in addressing the historical role of emergency in relation to constitutional orders. I turn then to exploring the political and legal context of the prorogation of emergency measures in 1938 Romania. Last, I examine the limited status of modern legality in a situation oversaturated by emergency measures.

Nine of 10 modern constitutions contain explicit emergency provisions describing who can declare a state of emergency (and under what conditions) and the additional powers the government enjoys under a state of emergency. As states of emergency typically allocate additional powers to the executive, they lend themselves easily to abuse and provide political incentives to declare emergencies. In this paper, we analyze the conditions under which government behavior under a state of emergency deviates from constitutional provisions and a gap between de jure provisions and de facto behavior thus results. In a novel data set comprising 853 emergency declarations, 115 are identified as unlawful. We find that autocratic governments are more likely than democratic governments to violate the constitution. The requirement that a second chamber approve the emergency declaration is associated with a higher likelihood of its being unconstitutional.

This paper argues that disaster management governance in Indonesia must align with emergency principles. In emergencies, special laws apply to prevent budget misuse and abuse of power. This study analyzes emergency authority in Indonesia's checks and balances system, focusing on legislative oversight. Using a legal-normative approach, it reviews Law No. 24/2007 on Disaster Management and the principles of necessity, proportionality, and temporality. The main findings are: (1) national and regional legislatures have little role in extending or ending emergency status, which allows unchecked use of emergency powers; (2) oversight of emergency actions is weak; and (3) there are no clear time limits for emergencies, enabling excessive extensions. The study recommends reforming laws to: (a) increase the legislature’s role in emergency status decisions; (b) clarify oversight and budgeting authority; and (c) set deadlines and rules for extending emergencies to improve accountability.

The COVID-19 pandemic has renewed attention to the entanglement of politics, health, and the governance of life. Measures such as lockdowns, vaccination campaigns, digital contact tracing, and quarantine protocols reveal that public health policy operates not merely as a technical or medical response, but as a form of political power acting directly upon bodies and populations. By examining how states enacted exceptional measures under conditions of crisis, this paper highlights both the potency and the fragility of sovereign control. Comparative case studies demonstrate how legal frameworks, political cultures, and ideological assumptions shape not only policy responses but also the differential valuation of life during health emergencies. Ultimately, the article argues that public health crises are not solely biomedical events, but deeply political phenomena.

The article addresses Giorgio Agamben's critical commentary on the global governance of the COVID-19 pandemic as a paradigm of his political thought. While Agamben's comments have been criticized as exaggerated and conspiratorial, they arise from the conceptual constellation that he has developed starting from the first volume of his Homo Sacer series. At the centre of this constellation is the relation between the concepts of sovereign power and bare life, whose articulation in the figure of homo sacer Agamben traces from Antiquity to the present. We shall demonstrate that any such articulation is impossible due to the belonging of these concepts to different planes, respectively empirical and transcendental, which Agamben brings together in a problematic fashion. His account of the sovereign state of exception collapses a plurality of empirical states of exception into a zone of indistinction between different exceptional states and the normal state and then elevates this very indistinction to the transcendental condition of intelligibility of politics as such. Conversely, the notion of bare life, originally posited as the transcendental condition of possibility of positive forms of life, is recast as an empirical figure, whose sole form is the absence of form. We conclude that this problematic articulation should be abandoned for a theory that rather highlights the non-relation between sovereign power and bare life, which conditions the possibility of resistance and transformation that remains obscure in Agamben's thought.

How has Giorgio Agamben’s state of exception enabled the repressive concretization of al-Sisi’s populism following the 3 July 2013? Drawing on the state of exception, this study argues that al-Sisi’s populism developed a complex mechanism of repression building on his predecessors’ points of strength. Inspired by his predecessors’ repressive techniques, al-Sisi’s populism manifested a three-pronged strategy encompassing Nasser’s heroic image as a nation savior, al-Sadat’s technocrats-military-businessmen alliance, and Mubarak’s extended structural and legal repression. This study builds on a critical discourse analysis of al-Sisi’s speeches, legal documentations, and reports addressing Egyptian politics from 2013 until present in identifying a threefold populism based on the projection of a heroic image, a business-military-technocrats alliance, and structural-legal repression.