Why Emergency Powers Are Democracy’s Stress Test - The Recursive

On December 30, 2025, The Recursive’s Teodora Atanasova published a late 2025 interview with ISSE’s Founder and Governing Board Chair Ed Bogan, discussing all facets of emergency powers abuses, and as well the strategy and goals of ISSE. From the article’s introduction:

States of emergency are no longer exceptional. Between 1985 and 2014, at least 137 countries experienced at least one declared state of emergency. Some follow clear and immediate crises — war, pandemics, natural disasters, with about 90% of constitutions worldwide including explicit provisions for states of emergency. Others arise from far more ambiguous threats.

“Emergency powers are meant to be temporary and targeted,” explains Ed Bogan, a former CIA officer with more than two decades of overseas experience. “But more and more, they’re being used to consolidate authority, suppress dissent, and weaken democratic accountability. The warning lights are blinking red right now.”

Bogan is the founder and board chair of the newly launched Institute for the Study of States of Exception (ISSE), a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization dedicated to tracking, analyzing, and exposing the misuse of emergency powers worldwide.

The concept of a “state of exception” refers to moments when normal legal protections are suspended in the name of crisis management. While such measures are embedded in constitutions across the globe, Bogan argues that the real danger lies not in their existence, but in their normalization.

The entire article on The Recursive can be found here.