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THEORY-1198: Unlawful states of emergency, in declaration, conduct or duration, follow political turmoil far more often than natural disasters, are rarer in democracies than in autocracies, and last much longer than lawful ones

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Properties4
StatusProposed
Tagssociety-and-governance
SourceLIT-1473 — Unconstitutional States of Emergency
ExtendsTHEORY-911 — Of 853 national states of emergency declared from 1949 to 2017, 115 were reported as unlawful in declaration, conduct or duration; 97 of those followed political turmoil and 14 natural disasters, democracies were less likely than autocracies to run one, and those so coded lasted 321 days on average against 115, a gap the coding of overlong emergencies as unlawful builds in part

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Source

Bjørnskov, Voigt & Khesali, LIT-1473, read in full in NOTE-1125 from ILE Working Paper No. 51 (August 2021). What the paper reports is THEORY-911, which this entry extends.

The thesis

The abstract states its findings as facts about emergencies: of 853 declarations, 115 “are unlawful”; political turmoil is likelier than natural disaster to be followed by an unlawful emergency, and autocracies likelier than democracies; and unlawful emergencies last far longer.

Why it is not held

Lawfulness is coded from English-language press and NGO reports, which the authors gloss as “suspected to be unlawful” and expect to undercount. Overlong emergencies with no recorded lawful extension are coded unlawful, which builds part of the duration gap in. An independent coding from legal sources is what would hold it.

Only the abstract was compared against the version of record, so a discrepancy there in 97/14 or 321/115 would restore the demand for it.

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