Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan depicts a colossal sovereign, comprised of countless individuals that make up the sovereign. Two interpretations are presented at first glance – either the individuals are under the supreme dictation of the sovereign, or that their autonomy is voluntarily surrendered in exchange for the promised prosperity the sovereign casts over the land. The paradoxical nature of these ideologies raises a prevalent question in political philosophy: do individuals surrender their own liberty by coercion, or willingly? What conditions may impose consented obedience towards the state?
During a crisis, the principal justification for an authoritarian legislature is to protect and reconstruct volatile communities. Rapidly changing events increase necessity for external involvement. While top-down force may be a popularized analogy depicting authoritarian measures, in extraordinary circumstances such as COVID-19, fundamental rights may be suspended in a preliminary state to allow a government to direct the public's safety. Thus, said governments undergo a state of exception (Agamben, 2008). An opposing dichotomy argues that it is not the permanence of this state that should be evaluated, but the individual responses of the democratic population to this state. Resultantly, I argue that the pandemic did not inherently normalize authoritarianism; it revealed underlying compliant behaviors in societies that stem from the sake of protection. However, while these behaviors are not directly enforced, but rather comprise the democratic population's own choices, one cannot say they do not incline towards the presence of authoritarian mechanisms.
Firstly, critics may view authoritarianism as a product of the state of exception, and that it "manifests itself when the sovereign authority assumes a superior position to the legal system" (Ates, 2023). However, the obedience of COVID-19's responsory regulations, such as lockdowns and restricted human contact, was not enforced by the overt command of a sole dictator. The absence of a superpower may eliminate authoritarian assumptions; yet one must question the intentions behind the imposed safety regulations themselves, and what this means for evaluating authoritarian censure.
Suppose X represents the suspension of free will by the state in a democratic population, and Y represents the state's willingness to subjugate the electorate when politically opposed. Many would assume that because X occurred (such as travel and contact restrictions), this inherently meant authoritarianism was normalised in the subsequent population. However, true authoritarian motives progress only if X occurs because of Y. In the pandemic's case, the occurrence of X was a result of Z (the preservation of public health and safety during crisis). The binary prongs of Y and Z provide two opposing doctrines, raising a prevalent contextual counter: can governments use Z to mask manipulative power dynamics to control the public, for the sole intention of Y?
For a state to achieve this, one must assess the public's response. We cannot deny that democracies provide a sense of autonomy for their citizens – however, when a situation arises where the populations' chances of survival are at risk, how willing are the members to surrender their liberties in exchange for desired protection? A collective psychological fear of mortality may lead a population to obey governmental rule in desperation. Therefore, legislatures may use this obedience to provide a sense of control and protect the citizenry; yet they simultaneously regain power over the public's need, raising authoritarian assumptions. This evolutionary and psychological flaw of the public is discussed through Greenberg's Terror Management Theory (TMT).
When a population's collective mortality is under a biological threat, they willingly conform to public health regulations as the utmost measure of their protection. Their fear of death results in internalisation of these regulations, resulting in the subsequent loss of autonomy during a crisis. The awareness of our mortality is a driving force that escalates our fear of passing and forces us to adapt to it in some way (Drevitch, 2025). In COVID-19's case, the adaptation was the surrender of free will (e.g. contact bans) in exchange for proposed security. However, while mandates such as travel restrictions impose the idea that individuals had no choice but to follow the rules stated, the intention behind them was to maintain public safety and prevent healthcare organisations from collapsing. These regulations were not enforced for the purpose of suppressing political defiance or to exercise loss of autonomy over the public, which are characteristics of authoritarian regimes, but rather to reinforce a population's biological wellbeing.
Like the TMT's psychological frameworks, a population confronted by mortality salience can be used to explain the proportional relationship between COVID-19 cases and adapted self-protectionist measures. Paradoxical to ideas of governmental force, empirical metrics show that when measuring the relationship between mortality salience and social orientation, individuals with a direct reminder of acute mortality (i.e. increased mortality salience) are more self-protectionist in nature (Ma et al, 2022). Concurrently, heightened mortality salience has led to an increase in collectivist behaviours (Ma et al, 2022). The results propose the potency of a mutual surveillance effect in a population through said collectivist behaviours.
Secondly, authoritarianism by definition cannot be addressed without viewing the population's interactions with each other in the presence of laws. While TMT backs an individual's compliance, one must question how these behaviours spread throughout a society. This is best illustrated by the concept of the Panopticon, designed by Jeremy Bentham. As the prisoners in the Panopticon didn't know when they were being watched, they were forced to assume they were always watched. This principle can be applied to the public during the pandemic, expanded by Michel Foucault's theory of governmentality; through self-policing methods such as wearing masks, covering our mouths when coughing and self-distancing, members of society unknowingly set examples to other members. Many individuals conformed to these norms set during a crisis out of fear of judgement, guilt or suspicion from those around them. To parallel this analysis, we can analyse Foucault's proposition that populations are deeply susceptible to disciplinary biopower (Young, 2019). States can use crises to regulate and influence its own citizenry, allowing them to oppress themselves and each other out of fear.
Resultantly, these norms spread through collective societal behaviours, and insinuates that governments do not require standardised force to monitor a population; it is our internalisation of rules set that lead us to monitor ourselves and those around us, resulting in "the most insidious form of power a hierarchy can exercise," a Foucault-driven approach. Like the Panopticon's absence of guard, the prevalence of peer pressure and rigid social norms proposed that compliance did not cease despite the absence of government surveillance. The concept of the public being psychologically desperate for the very interventions critics label "authoritarian" proposes a lasting resolution; the difference between self-regulatory behaviour during the pandemic and traditional authoritarian power is the lack of need for force. The pandemic rather revealed a different and more effective use of governance; internalizing it into the very population itself.
Thirdly, to circulate, we must take Agamben's criticisms into account. He portrays a "state of exception" as a situation of crisis; however, its crucial feature is "suspending normal legal rules in order to restore order or preserve the nation in light of that crisis or emergency" (ISSE, 2025). Agamben expands that many legislatures weaponize the state's permanence, and suspended regulations eventually come to wield the same force as constitutional law, blurring the line between governance and authoritarian rule (ISSE, 2025). If we take the events of the post-9/11 "War on Terror" into consideration, one realises that the 2002 regime at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base represents Agamben's concept of a perpetual state of exception. Described as a "legal black hole" (Rogers, 2008) which is "entirely removed from the law and from judicial oversight" (Agamben, 2005), it held nearly 800 Muslim men and boys who were detained without charge and trial (Centre for Victims of Torture, 2026). The Bush Administration's suspension of legal rights to allow torture is a prominent example of the consequences of a state of exception. Critics can apply this extension to the lingering presence of government surveillance for public health tracking post-pandemic – monitory features that were only deemed necessary during the crisis are still being used today.
Authoritarian governments are stated to be "primarily concerned with suppressing political opposition rather than reshaping all of society." We can apply this criterion directly to the abuse of power in Guantanamo's torture camps, as the prisoners' opposing political and religious beliefs were driving forces in their capture. However, if we bring up the XYZ variables mentioned earlier, one can present Guantanamo Bay and COVID-19's altered legislations as opposing. Y is a direct representation of the motive behind the torture of Guantanamo prisoners, making it a representation of abused authoritarian power in history. Alternatively, COVID-19's political impact was inherently due to Z – the temporary sacrifices of rights were required to protect the population in its vulnerability, and ensure survival. To justify the differences in both events, we can apply John Locke's theory of prerogative power to the pandemic, and compare it to Guantanamo.
Prerogative power, by definition, is only undertaken "to act according to discretion, for the public good, without the prescription of the law, and sometimes even against it, is that which is called prerogative" (Locke, 2003). Locke's influence on liberalism reflects the application of his claims on the pandemic's events. Because societies require governing systems to achieve natural order, the absence of them would only result in what Locke states as the "authority to judge between them." Governmentality beliefs of policing ourselves and others are synonymous with this; however, if the absence of mandates were ensued, moral imbalances such as bias, conflict and escalation would have been certain to occur. Thus, the presence of prerogative power supports key concepts in modern liberalism; socioeconomic safety is provided as an essential tool to maintain the public wellbeing required in true freedom of action. COVID-19's temporary lockdowns cannot be morally compared to the absence of political and human rights present through authoritarian measures in Guantanamo. One key factor must consistently be considered – to establish these laws for the preservation of the public, rather than the destruction of the public, is what Locke consistently reattributed as an abject opposition to authoritarianism.
To conclude, it is not the question of whether the pandemic itself standardized authoritarianism, but the effects of its rampant power across political systems. One must not wonder what occurred during the crisis that resembled authoritarianism, but what occurred in the following years. If a population is willing to surrender its power in exchange for a safeguard, this postulates a wider question: will tension between freedom and security ensue? What does this impose on liberal futures?
To answer this question, I would like to elaborate that it is not a commander we fall victim to, but human nature. To draw parallels to Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, take the anecdote of The Grand Inquisitor.
"These people are more certain than ever before that they are completely free, and at the same time they themselves have brought us their freedom and obediently laid it at our feet. It is our doing, but is it what you wanted? This sort of freedom?" The Grand Inquisitor, in Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov
Living in the aftermath of the pandemic causes us to consider that our internalisation of procedures led to normalized authoritarian compliancy. After all, our naivety stemmed from beliefs that our protection was of utmost importance – and while it may have been during 2020, we must shift the lens to the present. We may as well have taken our freedom and laid it at the feet of public health officials, and therefore, laid it at the feet of powers above us in the hierarchy. Therefore, it can be stated that it was our latent desires to be cradled in the welcome arms of safety, that has laid the groundwork for our victimization. Certainly, the cost of our loose grip on liberation is what devalues our resolute position in political society. One must only hope that future legislations will not use this precedent to their advantage.