Original scientific paper
INFECTIOUS DISEASES AS A SOURCE OF THREAT TO POLITICAL SECURITY: THE CASE OF THE CORONAVIRUS EPIDEMIC IN THE REPUBLIC OF CROATIA
Pavao Jergović
Abstract
The change in the security paradigm and the move away from a realistic military-centric perspective, boosted by the end of the Cold War, enabled the entry of a number of non-military threats into the focus of security studies. In this context, infectious diseases are recognized primarily as a threat to the safety of the individual, but also, considering the scale of the consequences and the effect on different spheres of the state and society, as a serious threat to national security. The emergence of the coronavirus pandemic at the beginning of 2020 soon proved to be the biggest public health crisis of the 21st century. The impossibility of controlling and suppressing the pandemic with the mechanisms of biopolitics, on the one hand, and the successful securitization of the virus, on the other hand, resulted in the acceptance of the virus as an extraordinary security threat and, consequently, in the expansion of the powers of the executive power and restrictive security measures aimed at its elimination. The de facto state of emergency in which Croatian society found itself, which was manifested by limiting a number of constitutional rights and freedoms, called into question political security of Croatian citizens.
Keywords
coronavirus; state of emergency; biopolitics; securitization; political security
Hrčak ID:
295503
URI
Publication date:
28.12.2021.
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