Law and the political stakes of global crises

Lessons from development practice for a coronavirus world

Datos Bibliográficos

ID6090702
AutoresDeval Desai (0000-0001-6909-1324, Edinburgh Law School Edinburgh UK, autor de correspondencia)
Año2023
Volumen45
Número3
Páginas273-291
Fecha de publicación2023-07-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaLaw & Policy (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0265-8240 • E-ISSN: 1467-9930
EditorialWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/lapo.12203
OpenAlexW4317387750
IdiomaEN
Referencias citadas58

Law has translated the coronavirus crisis into politically salient forms in people's lives, from states of emergency, to border closures, to mask mandates. Yet political theory work on these forms has focused on constraining arbitrary state power. In this paper, I try to broaden this focus. Substantively, I argue that policy and its implementation also matter to how we theorize the role of law in crises, in terms of how we understand the political power of society and its relationship to the state. Methodologically, I argue that thinking about law in this way is more than a complement to or replacement for thinking about constraints on arbitrariness. Rather, different forms of thinking about law and crisis should constantly be used to critique each other in order to pursue the sorts of legal innovations required by geomobile and interconnected crises. Given that the current pandemic and its broader consequences are still unfolding, I turn to development policy and practice to demonstrate the process and consequence of such ongoing critique in action. Studying rule of law reforms—including during the West African Ebola crisis—I show how practitioners continually reimagined law in ways that facilitated ongoing legal innovation that could adapt to the politics of the crisis

Arbitrariness · Epistemology · Law and economics · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Salient · Sociology · State (computer science · State of emergency · Environmental law and policy · Global Security and Public Health · Human Rights and Development · Law