Emergency provisions allow governments to intervene swiftly, but also create opportunities for political capture. We analyze how this tension plays out in the largest federal republic in the world, India. Article 356 of the Indian Constitution (known as president’s rule) allows the union (federal) cabinet to dismiss a functioning state government and dissolve the elected state legislature, if the federally appointed state governor recommends the dismissal due to political crises, natural disasters, riots, and so forth. Using an original panel dataset of Indian states from 1952 until 2019, we find that emergency provisions allow for political capture increasing federal dominance in India. We find that: (1) the likelihood of invoking Article 356 is almost exclusively determined by the political strength of the parties in majority/coalition governments at the state level; (2) emergencies like riots and natural disasters are not significant predictors of invoking Article 356; and (3) judicial safeguards added in 1994 significantly reduced the imposition of Article 356.

Nine out of ten countries currently have emergency provisions written into their constitutions, here simply referred to as emergency constitutions. The nature of these provisions remains poorly understood. We therefore aim at providing answers to two questions: (1) how much additional discretionary power do emergency constitutions allow and which political actors are given the additional power; and (2) is there a limited number of “typical” emergency constitutions that combine various aspects in similar or even identical fashion? To answer the first question we construct an Indicator of Emergency Powers (INEP) which takes six central elements of emergency provisions explicitly into account. To answer the second question, we draw on cluster analysis and identify six well-defined clusters. Both the INEP as well as the six clusters allow us to answer important follow-up questions such as what the factors are that determine a country’s choice of emergency constitution but also under what conditions governments are likely to declare a state of emergency given the prevalent emergency constitution.

The relationship between terrorist activities and states of emergency has never been explored in a cross-country perspective. This chapter is a first step to change that. Given that a terror act has been committed, what are the factors that lead governments to declare a state of emergency – or refrain from declaring it? And given that a state of emergency has been declared, what are the effects thereof? In this chapter, two world regions are analyzed: seventy-nine countries having Western-style constitutions and the member states of the Organization of Islamic Countries. We find that more terrorist incidents increase the likelihood of a state of emergency. Interestingly, emergencies are less likely to be declared in election years, supposedly because governments believe them to be unpopular. Once a state of emergency is declared, it generally leads to substantially more government repression. Finally, countries already under a state of emergency are more likely to suffer from additional terror attacks, challenging the effectiveness of states of emergency.

In this chapter, we ask two questions: (1) Does the constitutionalization of emergency provisions help governments to cope with disasters and other extraordinary events? (2) What particular parts of emergency constitutions fare best? We find that the more advantages emergency constitutions confer to the executive, the higher the number of people killed as a consequence of a natural disaster, controlling for its severity. As this is an unexpected result, we discuss a number of potential explanations, the most plausible being that governments use natural disasters as a pretext to enhance their power. Furthermore, the easier it is to call a state of emergency, the larger the negative effects on basic human rights. Interestingly, presidential democracies are better able to cope with natural disasters than parliamentary ones in terms of lives saved, whereas autocracies do significantly worse in the sense that empowerment rights seriously suffer in the aftermath of a disaster.

Nine out of ten modern constitutions contain explicit emergency provisions, describing who can call a state of emergency (and under which conditions) and the additional powers government enjoys under a state of emergency. As states of emergency typically allocate additional powers to the executive, they lend themselves easily to abuse and provide political incentives to declare emergencies. In this paper, we analyze under what conditions government behavior under a state of emergency deviates from constitutional provisions and a de jure/de facto gap thus emerges. Such a gap can be caused by the unlawful declaration of an emergency, the noncompliance with constitutional provisions in the course of an emergency, or the perpetuation of a state of emergency beyond the constitutionally defined length. Based on a novel dataset comprising 853 emergency declarations, 115 are identified as unlawful. We find that events caused by political turmoil are more likely to be followed by an unlawful emergency than natural disasters. Autocratic governments are more likely to renege against the constitution than democratic governments.

The COVID-19 pandemic has not only caused millions to die and even more to lose their jobs, it has also prompted more governments to simultaneously declare a state of emergency than ever before enabling us to compare their decisions more directly. States of emergency usually imply the extension of executive powers that diminishes the powers of other branches of government, as well as the civil liberties of individuals. Here, we analyze the use of emergency provisions during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic and find that it can be largely explained by drawing on political economy. It does, hence, not constitute an exception. We show that many governments have (mis-)used the pandemic as a pretext to curtail media freedom. We further show that executive decrees are considered a substitute for states of emergency by many governments.

The study of constitutional emergency provisions remains in its infancy. We present the first overview and analysis of how specific emergency provisions vary across the fifty US state constitutions. The emergency provisions vary considerably across states with the Texan constitution exhibiting the most limited provisions and Georgia the most expansive ones. A cluster analysis shows support for dividing the US constitutions into six “families” and reveals the Texan constitution as substantially different from the rest. We explore whether these constitutional choices may have been affected by disaster risk, prevailing ideology, state wealth, and other factors for which historical data exist. We provide tentative evidence showing that emergency provisions have a significant effect on both the number of fatalities as well as on the damage suffered in the aftermath of a natural disaster. Clearly, therefore, the paper has implications for constitutional policy.

Although nine out of ten countries have emergency provisions written into their constitutions, the nature of these provisions remains poorly understood. We therefore aim at providing first answers to two straightforward questions: (1) which factors cause the inclusion of emergency provisions into constitutions? and (2) given that emergency provisions are constitutionalized – which factors determine the type of emergency provisions enacted? We find that the way in which a country’s constitution is produced has important consequences for its emergency provisions: constitutional assemblies dominated by legislators are loath to grant the executive many extra powers. Further, emergency constitutions in countries with stronger veto institutions and higher average income allow more discretionary power. This also holds for countries that recently experienced a coup. Interestingly, countries prone to natural disasters and countries far from the equator allow less power.