The legislature ultimately rejected the move, and courts later ruled it an abuse of emergency powers. (For example, these include the ICNL COVID-19 Civic Freedom Tracker, the Lex-Atlas Emergency Powers Dataset, and academic datasets such as Bjørnskov et al.’s “Unconstitutional States of Emergency” dataset.) That spectrum is exactly what ISSE aims to track; formally declared states of emergency, prolonged ones, and informally maintained emergency powers. One of ISSE’s flagship projects will be a country-by-country scorecard assessing how emergency powers are used, and abused, across jurisdictions. “Over the last four or five presidents, emergency powers have been used more frequently than ever,” he notes.

Source: The North Africa Journal December 30, 2025 14:23 UTC