Constitution and Law as Instruments for Normalising Abnormalcy: States of Exception in the Plurinational Context

Abstract

This paper argues that in plurinational contexts that are embroiled in armed conflict, the state of exception has been used to invoke national security Laws and related to manage the conflict itself and to use the force of the state to settle the friend-enemy distinction that Schmitt identified as the purpose of the state of exception. It also argues that though centralisation of power has been justified by political elites as an exception to the liberal constitutional paradigm and not as an abandoning of the same, that centralisation has become a normal and essential feature of constitutional praxis in plurinational states aimed at protecting the dominant community’s status in the state. This is in its totality shows a process whereby the constitution and laws beholden to the dominant community are instumentalised in the normalisation of what would be otherwise considered to be abnormal.