Politics of Exception: Criminalizing Activism in Western European Democracies

This chapter argues that the phenomenon—which encompasses legal discourses as well as political processes and practices,—is instrumental for maintaining and reorganizing state power by framing protest as a destabilizing Other rather than as an integral part of the existing political order. In political theory it is commonplace to comprehend a formal state of emergency as a legal–political instrument when facing a crisis, that is, as a provision which is accompanied by a shift of powers from the legislative to the executive branch and by the restriction of basic rights and freedoms. Post-colonial perspectives emphasize the parallels of such current politics of exception with colonial governing. The regulation of protest through politics of exception follows an expansionary logic: more and more parts of the social are connoted as “threats” reflecting (in-)securitization processes. In late modern societies threats are perceived as difficult to foresee and thus volatile and non-containable.