Emergency powers and regimes of exception in Latin America: a political perspective

Emergency powers in general and regimes of exception in particular have been widely explored by political theorists and scholars of constitutional law and yet have been systematically forgotten by political scientists, despite their empirical relevance in regions with authoritarian pasts, such as the case of Latin America. This essay has three aims: first, it offers some reflections on the nature of emergency politics as a political concept; next, it describes the importance of regimes of exception in the Latin American region; and finally, it suggests some theoretical-methodological proposals in order to include these mechanisms in political science research.