Abstract

At this historical juncture, after the Covid-19 pandemic, it is arguably worthwhile to finetune our understanding of the notions of exception and emergency, as applicable to the realm of political rule. The institutional figure of the dictator in republican Rome shows that it is possible to keep them distinct. The dictator governed an emergency without letting it slide into an exception, rather taking care that freedom (libertas) be preserved. The essential point is that it was not up to the dictator to determine what counted as an emergency. Contrasting this idea of emergency powers with Schmitt’s state of exception, and drawing on the reflections of Ackerman, Manin, Rossiter, the article highlights several requirements that jointly characterize a democratic notion of emergency rule: the sudden and circumscribed nature of the emergency, the separation of the power to declare and to confirm (and renew) a state of emergency, accountability of emergency powers, built-in institutional procedures for ensuring a timely return to a normality which, nonetheless, cannot be wished to be identical to the initial status quo.