Özgür Salmanoğ examines how Turkey's 2016–2018 state of emergency enabled thirty-seven executive decree-laws that extended well beyond responding to the failed 2016 coup, reshaping state institutions while weakening legislative and judicial constraints. The article demonstrates how temporary emergency authorities can become mechanisms of lasting institutional transformation, showing how exceptional governance may persist through the structures it leaves behind even after the formal emergency ends.

This article examines how Belgium's 1916 emergency legislation expanded executive authority during World War I despite a constitutional prohibition on suspending the Constitution. Through archival research, it argues that the legal justification for exceptional powers rested not only on military necessity but also on broader political objectives aimed at preserving state authority, maintaining public order, and shaping the postwar constitutional landscape.

This article develops the concept of “legalized lawlessness” to explain how exceptional power can become embedded within ordinary law, bureaucracy, and administrative governance rather than appearing only through formal states of emergency. Drawing on Schmitt, Agamben, and Arendt, it shows how the normalization of extraordinary authority can diffuse responsibility, weaken public judgment, and transform the exception into a durable feature of political life.

Comparing Hungary and Poland, this article argues that the depth of democratic backsliding depends not only on populist politics but on whether governing parties acquire sufficient constitutional authority to permanently reshape the rules of political competition. It offers an important contribution to debates over constitutional resilience, executive aggrandizement, and the legal mechanisms through which democratic erosion can become increasingly difficult to reverse.

Through a comparative analysis of Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic, this paper examines the institutional mechanisms driving democratic erosion, including executive aggrandizement, autocratic legalism, judicial restructuring, media capture, and securitization. It argues that contemporary constitutional transformation increasingly occurs through gradual legal and institutional change rather than overt constitutional rupture, offering an important framework for understanding how exceptional forms of governance can become normalized over time.

This article introduces the concept of "digital preparedness" to explain how emergency-driven digital infrastructures created during the COVID-19 pandemic can become permanent features of ordinary governance, reshaping the relationship between data, executive authority, and individual rights. Through a detailed case study of Norway's preparedness registry, the authors explore how crisis responses may accelerate lasting institutional and regulatory change, offering a new framework for understanding exceptional governance in the digital age.

Through the Polish Kamiński and Wąsik case, Michał Stambulski develops the concept of "sovereign presidential lawfare," examining how constitutionally grounded presidential powers can be used to reshape the balance between the executive and judiciary without formally changing the constitutional order. The article offers a valuable framework for understanding how exceptional executive authorities may gradually transform democratic governance through legally authorized but structurally significant interventions.

Beginning with President Yoon Suk Yeol's failed December 2024 martial law declaration, this article examines how populist movements can evolve from constitutionally constrained forms of political leadership into more radical efforts to override democratic institutions through extraordinary executive powers. The study highlights the relationship between populist crisis narratives, emergency authority, and democratic resilience, demonstrating how constitutional institutions can both constrain and ultimately reverse exceptional exercises of executive power.

Following Péter Magyar's decisive electoral victory over Viktor Orbán, Kim Lane Scheppele examines the formidable legal and institutional obstacles to restoring constitutional democracy after sixteen years of executive consolidation, institutional capture, and prolonged emergency governance. The article explores the challenge of de-exceptionalization—the difficult process of dismantling entrenched systems of exceptional governance and rebuilding democratic institutions capable of resisting future authoritarian relapse.

Drawing on case studies from Vienna, Austria, and Nusaybin, Turkey, Ayşe Çaglar examines how emergency laws governing displaced populations reshape authority between municipal and national governments, often expanding executive control over urban governance long after an immediate crisis begins. The article demonstrates that emergency powers frequently transform not only the governance of displaced populations but also the institutional distribution of authority itself, creating durable changes in how cities, states, and executive power interact.

Beginning with South Korea’s failed December 2024 martial law declaration, which was rapidly reversed through legislative resistance and public mobilization, Christopher Carothers argues that Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan remain resilient democracies while exhibiting distinct warning signs of erosion: overcentralized power in Japan, severe polarization in South Korea, and sustained Chinese interference in Taiwan. The article shows both how democratic institutions can withstand an acute abuse of emergency power and how quieter patterns of norm violation, institutional manipulation, and partisan control can continue to weaken constitutional governance over time.

Shruti Gokhale conceptualizes nostalgia as a political technology rooted in the condemned and traumatic legacy of India's 1975 Emergency. She argues that the BJP's public condemnation of the Emergency paradoxically reproduces its governing logics, allowing the unresolved violence of the past to persist as an active force shaping contemporary governance.

Using cross national cases, Johannes Thumfart discusses internet shutdowns (ISs) within the Just Securitization Theory (JST). Thumfart denies the legitimacy of the vast majority of ISs, while sketching four exception scenarios of ISs justification.  

Yung Lin argues that Taiwan's civic-embedded public diplomacy (CEPD) offers a distinct post-authoritarian model of conflict resolution in East Asia. The article shows how CEPD strengthens domestic legitimacy while managing identity-based conflict through the normalization of Taiwan's international visibility.

This Foreword introduces the special issue of the European Journal of Risk Regulation entitled “Constitutional Risk Management in the V4 Countries,” which examines how constitutional democracies respond to crises through emergency legal regimes and exceptional powers. Focusing on the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia, the issue explores the constitutional management of crises including the COVID-19 pandemic, war, migration, and environmental emergencies. The collection analyzes both the legal frameworks governing states of exception and the broader normative question of how democratic systems can preserve rule-of-law safeguards during prolonged crises. ISSE will publish each article from the special issue as standalone website entries in the coming weeks. All materials are Open Access and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution license.

One of the goals of this paper is to define the most important concepts for the comparative study of the constitutional risk management of the V4 countries. For this purpose, first, it considers the theoretical difficulties of conceptualising emergencies, especially focussing on what kind of response can be given to the widespread view that considers emergencies as a kind of legal “black hole” due to their unpredictability. Then a general definition of “emergency” is discussed which is broad and flexible enough to serve as a basis not only for a comparative study but also for the constitutional discourse of emergencies. Constitutional crisis management as a core concept for such an undertaking is also canvassed. After defining the basic concepts essential for evaluation and comparison, the article outlines the general types of emergency regulatory regimes. The development of effective regulatory systems for emergencies also has to face certain problems that every constitutional polity must solve. Finally, the paper summarises assessment criteria necessary for the evaluation and a comparison of the emergency constitutions of different countries.

European constitutions differ greatly in the depth to which they deal with emergencies: while many constitutions devote more or less detailed regulation to emergency regimes, others almost completely neglect these issues or dedicate only some very short and vague references to emergency situations and powers. This article aims to carry out a systematic comparison of the emergency-related provisions of forty European constitutions, focusing on (1) the level of detail of the regulation, (2) the emergency regimes addressed, and (3) the restrictions on fundamental rights. As the study points out, only two out of the forty constitutions are completely silent on emergency powers. However, the remaining thirty-eight constitutions show wide variation in the level of detail of the emergency regulation; the vast majority of the emergency regimes are related to war or armed attack (or the danger thereof), to internal crises threatening the constitutional order, and to natural disasters. Concerning fundamental rights, the examination of the constitutional texts confirms that twenty-five out of the forty constitutions encompass some provisions on the restriction of these rights in a state of emergency.

The paper outlines Czech constitutional law and the development of emergency law. Initially, the legislature did not expect emergencies to occur, perhaps due to the idealistic optimism associated with the general atmosphere of the collapse of the Eastern Bloc in 1989 and the “End of History” thesis. As a result, emergencies were not regulated by Czech law in the 1990s. This changed after the great floods at the end of the 1990s, when “history returned,” and the need for some special rules for emergencies became clear. The first decades of this century showed that Czech emergency law worked well for short-term natural disasters. The game-changer came in 2020, with the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic and the need for a long-term state of emergency. It soon became clear that the rules that worked for floods and other disasters did not work for long-term global pandemics. In other words, the legal system was not prepared for a situation in which emergencies were the rule rather than the exception. Legislators were unable to prepare a long-term legislative response to fill this gap. The memory of COVID-19 is fading fast, and there are no plans to reform the relevant legislation. Accordingly, any new pandemic or similar event will lead to the same problems that the Czech legal system had to deal with from 2020 to 2022.

The paper offers a comprehensive overview of Hungary’s emergency law and its misuse over the four years since its introduction in March 2020. Hungary serves as a clear example of how a “state of danger” – initially intended as an exceptional legal measure – can become normalised through repeated declarations. The populist government’s continuous use of emergency powers has led to unchecked lawmaking and the manipulation of legal frameworks to advance populist agendas. The article argues that while Hungary’s detailed emergency provisions in the Fundamental Law were intended to serve as a form of constitutional risk management, after four years of living in a permanent “state of danger”, the scholarly debate has shifted to whether this very risk management has itself become the risk. According to emergency law theory, managing constitutional risks is equally vital in the emergency legal order. Yet in Hungary, both the black letter of the law and the constitutional practices observed during and after the COVID-19 pandemic – along with the Ninth Amendment to the Fundamental Law, which introduced a new emergency regime in 2021 – reveal that constitutional risk management has ultimately failed. This is manifest in the erosion of the separation of powers, the weakening of judicial review, and the shrinking of human rights protections. The article substantiates its argument by examining the related constitutional framework and constitutional practice in Hungary between 2020 and 2024.

This article analyses the constitutional framework regulating states of emergency in Poland and addresses key issues related to their interpretation and implementation. The first part discusses the conditions for declaring martial law, a state of an extraordinary situation, and a state of natural disaster, as well as the specific rules for the operation of public authorities in such emergencies. The next part analyses the practice, revealing the consistent reluctance of Polish authorities to invoke states of emergency, even in circumstances that seem to justify such measures. Consequently, a state of emergency under the 1997 Constitution was declared in Poland only once – in 2021, in response to a migration crisis on the border with Belarus. No constitutional emergency was declared during the COVID-19 pandemic, despite the introduction of far-reaching restrictions on individual rights and freedoms. The article argues that state authorities can abuse emergency regulations, either through their unjustified application or by deliberately circumventing them.