The Security-Democracy Paradox: Emergency Powers, Securitization, and Democratic Erosion in Uncertain Times

How should democracy evolve to remain relevant and resilient without destroying itself in the process? This panel proposes that one of the most urgent answers to this question lies in the deeply paradoxical relationship between security and democracy. In multiple contexts, established, emerging, and young democracies have resorted to exceptional measures that, invoking the protection of the State against real or perceived threats, terrorism, drug trafficking, insurgency, migration, expand executive power, restrict civil liberties, and weaken mechanisms of institutional oversight. The problem is not new, but its scale, scope, and persistence are unprecedented in the contemporary era: what were historically temporary measures have become structurally permanent, configuring a pattern of democratic erosion, as theorized by Bermeo, Levitsky, and Ziblatt, that manifests itself in political and institutional contexts as diverse as the post-9/11 war on terror, the militarization of public security in Latin America, securitized migration policies in Europe, and digital surveillance without judicial oversight in Asian democracies. Anchored in the literature on securitization (Buzan, Wæver) and democratic erosion, the panel invites both theoretical and empirical works that examine, from a comparative perspective, the institutional mechanisms through which security rhetoric converts into democratic erosion, with special attention to three dimensions: the normalization of states of exception and their transformation into permanent legal frameworks; the impact of securitization on democratic accountability, with particular emphasis on judicial review and legislative oversight; and the tension between the legitimate need for state protection and the preservation of the framework of rights and guarantees that defines a democratic regime. By bringing together and articulating cases from different regions, the panel contributes to the congress theme by interrogating whether the tools of security and surveillance of the State, once activated and institutionalized, can be reversed, or whether they contain an intrinsic expansive logic that renders democracy permanently "uncertain."