Nine out of ten modern constitutions contain explicit emergency provisions, describing who can call a state of emergency (and under which conditions) and the additional powers government enjoys under a state of emergency. As states of emergency typically allocate additional powers to the executive, they lend themselves easily to abuse and provide political incentives to declare emergencies. In this paper, we analyze under what conditions government behavior under a state of emergency deviates from constitutional provisions and a de jure/de facto gap thus emerges. Such a gap can be caused by the unlawful declaration of an emergency, the noncompliance with constitutional provisions in the course of an emergency, or the perpetuation of a state of emergency beyond the constitutionally defined length. Based on a novel dataset comprising 853 emergency declarations, 115 are identified as unlawful. We find that events caused by political turmoil are more likely to be followed by an unlawful emergency than natural disasters. Autocratic governments are more likely to renege against the constitution than democratic governments.

This chapter serves two purposes: it draws a number of conclusions from the previous chapters as well as pointing out a number of questions that deserve more attention. Among these are the relevance of rules for both choosing and amending constitutions. Another issue deals with the question why some constitutions are being complied with most of the time, whereas others seem to be pieces of prose not having much constraining effects on the governing. The last section deals with the relevance of emergency constitutions, i.e., those constitutionalized rules that deal with the conditions under which governments can declare a state of emergency and the extra competences that such declarations come with.