Crises as Accelerators of Power
Crises as Accelerators of Power
Crises are often described as moments of rupture, when the ordinary patterns of life and governance are suspended. Yet beneath this surface, crises perform a deeper function. They accelerate long-term projects by suspending ordinary scrutiny and compressing political time. What appears as a temporary emergency becomes, in practice, a mechanism for transformation.
The first way crises accelerate change is through the weakening of scrutiny. In ordinary circumstances, measures proposed by governments or institutions are subject to debate, negotiation, and checks that slow their implementation. In a crisis, these mechanisms are put aside. The urgency of survival shifts the conversation from deliberation to necessity. Actions are justified not on their merits but on their immediacy. This suspension of scrutiny allows measures that once faced opposition to advance quickly, under the cover of emergency.
Alongside this weakening of scrutiny comes a transformation in the tempo of politics. Crises compress time. Decisions that might have taken years of negotiation can be enacted in days or weeks. What is presented as provisional becomes embedded through use. Temporary measures are often left in place long after the crisis has subsided, their existence justified by inertia and habit. The result is that crises move long-term projects forward at speeds impossible in normal conditions.
This pattern reveals the duality of crises: they are both disruptions and accelerators. While they unsettle, they also enable. States use crises to expand their authority, introduce new laws, or reorganize institutions. Once enacted, these measures are rarely undone. They become woven into ordinary governance, normalized by time. What began as exceptional remains because dismantling it is more difficult than letting it persist.
The theoretical lesson here is that crises are not just interruptions of politics; they are instruments within it. They allow governments to use time strategically, to shift from gradualism to acceleration. They demonstrate how power exploits urgency: to bypass debate, to overcome resistance, and to make the exceptional permanent.
Understanding crises in this way reframes them. They are not only threats but also tools. They are moments when the constraints of normal politics loosen and when states can consolidate projects that might otherwise have languished. To analyze them is to see how sovereignty and authority exploit disruption to build permanence.
Crises, then, are not only events to endure but structures to study. They compress time, suspend scrutiny, and advance long-term transformations. Once their urgency has passed, what remains are the institutions, laws, and practices they enabled — still standing, still shaping life. The crisis is gone, but its architecture endures.