Covid-19 and political theory : the 2020 state of emergency in Spain, Hobbes’s Leviathan, and Kant’s “rechtlicher Zustand”

Abstract

The state of emergency declared in Spain in response to the covid-19 pandemic was forcefully condemned by a host of political analysts. Countless opinion articles were published in the press suggesting that the state of emergency had turned Spain into a quasi-totalitarian state where personal liberty was suppressed as the coalition Government of social democrats and communists met no institutional opposition to foist its (allegedly) left-wing agenda. Spain under the state of emergency was regarded by some as a modern reincarnation of Hobbes's Leviathan. This article analyses those claims concluding that the analogies drawn between the state of emergency and Hobbes's model of state are fundamentally flawed. Instead, the state of alarm was declared in accordance with the law and hence the only comparison to classic models of state should be drawn with Kant's "rechtlicher Zustand". Acknowledging the juridical legitimacy of the state of emergency, this article also considers Rawls's "public reason" principle concluding that the actual crux of the controversy was not the Hobbesian model of state, but the widespread perception that in years past a number of democratic principles were being curtailed.