I enjoyed some of the discussion of emergency powers. It could be good to mention the response to covid. Leaving to one side whether such policies were justified (they do seem to have saved many lives), country-wide lockdowns were surely one of the most illiberal policies enacted in history, and explicitly motivated by trying to address a global disaster. Outside of genocide and slavery, I struggle to think of many greater restrictions on individuals freedom than confining essentially the entire population to semi house arrest. In many cases these rules were brought in under special emergency powers, and sometimes later determined to be illegal after judicial review. However, these policies were often extremely popular with the general population, so I’m not sure they fit the democracy-vs-illiberalism dichotomy the article is sort of going for.
I enjoyed some of the discussion of emergency powers. It could be good to mention the response to covid. Leaving to one side whether such policies were justified (they do seem to have saved many lives), country-wide lockdowns were surely one of the most illiberal policies enacted in history, and explicitly motivated by trying to address a global disaster. Outside of genocide and slavery, I struggle to think of many greater restrictions on individuals freedom than confining essentially the entire population to semi house arrest. In many cases these rules were brought in under special emergency powers, and sometimes later determined to be illegal after judicial review. However, these policies were often extremely popular with the general population, so I’m not sure they fit the democracy-vs-illiberalism dichotomy the article is sort of going for.