The politics of exceptionalism: securitization and COVID-19

The suggestion that we “are at war” with the coronavirus pandemic was not uncommon in national representations of the challenge posed by the virus. Such a representation was in turn frequently linked to the imperative of emergency responses, including expanded police powers, national lockdowns, and border closures. For theorists of securitization, this is not surprising. For them, the language of security and existential threat enables extraordinary and exceptional practices. This paper interrogates these assumptions about the performative and enabling role of securitizing language by beginning with emergency measures and asking how these were justified, how they became possible, and how prominent the language of “security” was to this politics of exceptionalism. It examines justifications for emergency responses—national lockdown and/or border closures—in the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand in March 2020. Ultimately, the cases examined demonstrate significant variability in justifications for similar extreme measures. In the process, this analysis challenges core assumptions about the conditions in which extraordinary measures become possible, suggesting, in turn, the need for a context-specific understanding of both securitization and the conditions of exceptionalism.