Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) declared a state of emergency across West Africa following a series of recent coups and failed military mutinies across the region. The announcement was made by ECOWAS Commission President Omar Touray during ECOWAS’ 55th session of the Mediation and Security Council held in Abuja on December 9, 2025. On December 8, Nigerian fighter jets and ground troops moved to help restore order after a foiled coup attempt in Benin. Nigerian President Bola Tinubu sent fighter jets to assert control over Benin's airspace on Sunday as his close ally, Benin President Patrice Talon, tried to put down the coup attempt.

ECOWAS is a regional group of 12 West African nations currently, including Benin, Cabo Verde, Côte d’Ivoire, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Togo, focused on economic integration, free trade, and promoting peace. Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger were all recent member states but announced their withdrawal in early 2024.

In December 2025, Lithuania declared a state of emergency following repeated airspace incursions by unmanned balloons launched from neighboring Belarus, which authorities described as part of a broader hybrid threat affecting public safety and border security. Notably, the emergency was declared not by executive decree but by Lithuania’s parliament, the Seimas, acting under clear constitutional authority. The declaration is strictly time-limited, subject to legislative oversight, and embedded within ordinary constitutional procedures rather than suspended from them. As democracies increasingly invoke emergency powers in response to unconventional security challenges, Lithuania’s approach offers a contemporary example of how states can confront perceived threats while preserving parliamentary control and guarding against the normalization of exceptional measures.

Neither the declaration of war nor the use of emergency powers suspends fundamental human rights and humanitarian norms. Even in war, the principle of distinction under international humanitarian law, notably the Geneva Conventions, protects civilians. A drug boat, however illicit its cargo, is not a military target. Those on board remain civilians especially if there is no clear way of identifying them as combatants – or in this case, suspected gang members. From a human rights perspective, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights is equally clear. The right to life, protected under international law, cannot be suspended even under a declared national security emergency. Emergencies do not justify taking a life on the mere assumption of criminality. This is both arbitrary and unlawful. The same applies to due process. Every individual has the right to a fair trial before being deprived of his liberty, and even more so, his life. Drug trafficking is not a capital crime that would warrant a death sentence, and even if it were, punishment still requires trial and conviction. The bombings, therefore, would be extrajudicial punishment.

The United States Government has deployed a large military task force to the waters in the Caribbean Sea, while making a variety of threats against the government of Venezuela and against drug traffickers it alleges are operating in that country and elsewhere. It is also conducting a campaign of killings against alleged drug traffickers, using drones and aircraft to attack and destroy small boats without warning far from U.S. shores, in almost every instance leaving no survivors.

The first part of this essay describes the Trump administration’s threats of military force against Venezuela and its killings of alleged drug traffickers in small boats in the Caribbean, providing an analysis of relevant law. The concluding section, “States of Emergency: The Wars Abroad and the Wars at Home,” examines how the administration has combined narratives about the drug trade, terrorism, and immigration to assemble a legal and ideological toolbox for the construction of an authoritarian state.

On November 5, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in a case testing the limits of presidential emergency powers. At issue is whether a president may use the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to impose sweeping tariffs on imports from countries around the world.

The stakes of this case reach far beyond trade policy. The Court’s decision could shape whether the use of emergency powers to bypass Congress becomes a tool of routine governance, with profound implications for the constitutional separation of powers and limits on presidential authority.

The case arose after President Trump declared three national emergencies to impose tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and China, followed by a fourth national emergency to impose a 10 percent global tariff plus “reciprocal” tariffs of up to 50 percent on selected countries and corporations. He justified each of these measures as a response to an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to U.S. national security, foreign policy, and/or the economy.

A number of corporations and states responded by filing suit in federal court. The Brennan Center has filed friend-of-the-court briefs in several of these cases, arguing that longstanding trade imbalances do not constitute an emergency or an “unusual and extraordinary threat” and that IEEPA does not authorize the president to impose tariffs. The Court will now determine whether the statute gives presidents a “tariff pen” that can bypass Congress entirely.

Since late 2024, Ecuador has been governed under recurring states of exception declared by President Daniel Noboa, reflecting a sustained reliance on emergency powers to confront what authorities describe as grave internal disturbance. These measures (triggered by escalating gang violence, organized crime, and threats to public security) have covered multiple provinces and key urban areas, and have been repeatedly renewed for fixed periods (often 30 or 60 days). Under Ecuador’s constitutional framework, states of exception permit the temporary suspension of certain fundamental rights, expanded police and military deployment, curfews, and enhanced search and seizure authorities. While framed as necessary to restore order amid an unprecedented security crisis, the persistence and normalization of emergency governance in Ecuador raise significant questions about proportionality, democratic oversight, and the long-term implications for rule of law.

This November 2025 report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research discusses recent developments beginning in mid-September 2025 when Noboa moved to eliminate Ecuador’s long-standing diesel subsidies, a politically volatile decision that reignited protests and a national strike reminiscent of earlier Indigenous-led uprisings that had nearly toppled previous governments. Although the demonstrations were ultimately more limited in scope, the government’s response involved violent repression, resulting in at least three protester deaths, hundreds of arrests and injuries, and widespread allegations of human rights abuses condemned by international organizations.

Noboa next pushed a referendum (rejected by Ecuadorians during a November 16th vote taken subsequent to this report’s publication) featuring controversial proposals to convene a constituent assembly to rewrite the constitution and to lift the ban on foreign military bases, which critics warned would undermine constitutional rights, sovereignty, and human rights, amid an uneven campaign heavily favoring the government.

Concurrently, Noboa’s militarized security strategy has failed to curb violence, with homicide rates projected to reach historic highs in 2025, with documented cases of enforced disappearance, even as the United States continues to support the administration’s security agenda.

The views expressed in the excerpted New York Times Editorial Board opinion below are solely those of its authors. They do not reflect the views, positions, or policy recommendations of the Institute for the Study of States of Exception (ISSE), which does not take institutional positions on editorial commentary. The material is presented to illustrate a perspective relevant to ongoing debates concerning emergency powers and governance.

When you hear the word “autocracy,” the United States is rarely a country that comes to peoples’ minds. Right? Well according to these twelve red flags of democratic erosion, America has moved in the direction of autocracy, thanks to the efforts of President Donald Trump. The third red flag of democratic erosion, depicted in the linked video, is declaring national emergencies on false pretenses, which the New York Times Editorial Board indicates has already taken place since President Trump was inaugurated in early 2025.

First aired on July 11, 2024, following her remarks at the Chautauqua Institution, Elizabeth Goitein here explores the historical use and abuse of statutory emergency powers by U.S. presidents, emphasizing their infrequent invocation and the ethical implications, particularly highlighted by President Trump's controversial declaration during his first term for border wall funding. Goitein underscores bipartisan efforts for reform following these events, including proposed legislation to restrict the duration of emergency declarations. Goitein cautions against using emergency powers for long-standing issues like climate change, emphasizing their intended temporary and crisis-oriented nature in constitutional governance.

On December 4, 2025, the three judge U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit granted the Trump Administrations’s request to halt a lower court judge’s November 20, 2025, order concluding that President Trump’s deployment of 2000 National Guard troops to Washington, D.C., was illegal. The November 20 order had been postponed by the lower court’s judge from coming into effect until December 11, 2025, in order to give the Trump Administration time to appeal the decision. Initially, the D.C. attorney general had filed suit in September over the deployment, following President Trump’s August announcement that he would take over the city’s police department in conjunction with the National Guard deployments. As a result of the December 4, 2025, ruling, this suit filed by the D.C. attorney general will now continue.

Democracy and authoritarianism have been historically bound in a complex and sometimes intimate relationship. The global emergence of quite a few democratically elected authoritarian leaders today has made explicit what had always been an underlying feature of the history of democratic practice. The authoritarian strain was perhaps more marked in countries aspiring to democracy by shedding an inheritance of colonial despotism. India’s experiment with democracy after winning independence from British rule offers a fascinating case study of the struggle to establish democratic norms amid the lure of falling back on the structures of an authoritarian legacy.

On November 29, 2025, the Former JAGs Working Group issued a statement concerning the lethal strikes taken by the US Military on September 2, 2025, against a civilian boat allegedly carrying narcotics.  The statement, which is linked here, is unequivocal in its conclusion that if the second strike, which targeted two survivors of the initial strike, occurred as was reported by both the Washington Post and CNN, then the giving and execution of the order to kill the survivors constituted a war crime, murder, or both.

From the point of view of ISSE, the September 2 strike that reportedly killed eleven civilians, and subsequent strikes against civilian boats that are reported to have killed over seventy additional civilians, are connected to, and logically flow from, the administration's use of emergency powers. 

Carl Schmitt was a German jurist, political theorist, and author known for his controversial association with the Nazi regime. He is influential in political thought for his concepts, particularly the idea that the sovereign is "one who decides on the exception" and that politics is defined by the “friend-enemy” distinction. His work was highly critical of liberal democracy and influential in the development of authoritarian political theory, and is for the most part unavoidable when discussing theory around states of exception.

The new Blood Work podcast series takes on Schmitt’s work in this November 19, 2025, episode entitled “Crock of Schmitt.”

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.

In the aftermath of Donald Trump’s return to the White House, a flurry of executive orders and memoranda has once again brought the concept of “national emergency” to the forefront of American governance. Within hours of taking office, the administration declared a “national emergency at the southern border,” villainized immigration, and raised the specter of a “border emergency” vaguely connected with a threat of “foreign terrorist organizations.” At first glance, these actions might resemble a continuation of tactics from Trump’s previous term, especially his 2019 declaration of a national emergency at the border. On closer inspection, however, the administration’s actions stretch well beyond traditional emergency contexts of national security or foreign policy, seeping into what were once ordinary spheres of domestic governance. Two separate executive orders, for example, both announce the existence of a “national energy emergency” and instruct relevant agencies to address the “emergency.” A separately presidential memorandum directed federal agencies to “deliver emergency price relief” by taking actions to reduce costs of housing, food, and fuel.  

On October 31, 2025, ISSE’s Governing Board Chair Ed Bogan appeared on Michael Weiss’s “Foreign Office” podcast series, in an episode entitled “Former CIA Officer Ed Bogan on War, Ukraine, and the Limits of American Values - States of Exception.” During that episode, Ed talked extensively about the ongoing war in Ukraine, but also talked about ISSE’s purpose and plans now that the nonprofit is up and running.

When COVID-19 swept the world, governments invoked sweeping emergency powers and tools meant for war or catastrophe to restrict movement, control information, and consolidate authority. The pandemic tested the balance between public health and civil liberties, revealing how quickly exceptional emergency powers could become normalized.

The pandemic forced governments to navigate the tension between urgency and accountability. Rapid action saved lives, but emergency governance could further erode trust in institutions where transparency was weak. And once leaders exercised exceptional powers, rolling them back proved politically difficult.

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.

According to Human Rights Watch, Türkiye’s treatment of Uyghurs has increasingly assumed the character of an administrative state of exception, where broad and opaque “public security” powers override established legal protections. Turkish authorities arbitrarily assign “restriction codes”—often without evidence—to label Uyghurs as security threats, triggering detention, denial of residency or citizenship, and potential deportation. These codes function as emergency-style mechanisms that bypass due process, enabling detention in deportation centers where Uyghurs face pressure to sign “voluntary return” forms and, in some cases, mistreatment. Courts routinely uphold deportation orders on the basis of these codes alone and have discounted the prohibition against refoulement, despite clear evidence that Uyghurs face persecution and torture if returned to China. The reliance on foreign intelligence, including Chinese-provided lists branding peaceful activists as “terrorists,” further entrenches a security paradigm that suspends normal legal standards and undermines long-standing protections for Uyghurs. Overall, the report shows how Türkiye’s exceptional security authorities have created pervasive uncertainty for Uyghurs, eroded their legal status, and exposed them to serious risks of refoulement.

Report by the Honduran Human Rights Commission (CONADEH) on the first period of the country's "State of Emergency" decree. The data analyzed here show a serious discrepancy between the information that was being officially communicated by the National Police to the public and the data that CONADEH has been able to verify. This includes evidence that 95% of detentions during this period were for minor offenses, and only 1% of detentions were related to the crime of extortion (which was, officially, the rationale for the suspension of rights that came with the Decree). In addition, the identities of some people detained were not recorded, and detentions occurred far beyond the zone designated as part of the Decree. It is highly worrying for CONADEH that in view of these data, the State of Emergency has been extended. This extension necessarily implies two scenarios: either 1) these data were not analyzed, meaning the State's duty to build a broad and sufficient justification capable of arguing the suitability, necessity, and proportionality of the extension of the measure was not taken seriously; or 2) the information presented here was ignored, constituting an excessively discretionary decision on the part of the corresponding authorities.