Emergency, narratives, and pandemic governance

Abstract Pandemics present opportunities for states to acquire emergency powers by narrativizing pandemics as “acts of God,” “acts of war,” “acts of outsiders,” “sanitation-hygiene,” or “acts of the invisible enemy.” These narratives conveniently justify the imposition of undefined and often unrestrained constitutional or extra-constitutional emergency powers to reshape individual, social, and governance modalities. These narratives conveniently establish the setting for states to justify the imposition of broad emergency powers by determining the plot of pandemic-appropriate modalities for individuals, society, and governance mechanisms and classifying the characters of pandemic as protagonists and antagonists as per the plot and settings of the preferred narrative. This article attempts to reveal the theoretical and applicational interconnections between state-sponsored narratives and exercise of emergency powers during the pandemic governance in plague, cholera, influenza, and Covid-19 pandemics.