Power of government in Emergency Situations

Abstract

This study will contextualize Albania’s response to the pandemic within the framework of democracy and human rights perspectives. We will use four principles – legality, a bounded timeframe for emergency measures, necessity, and distributed power with checks on executive action—to examine Albania’s response to the pandemic.  Hybrid regimes in our case Albania with weaker institutions and lower public trust toward the government demonstrated certain risks to democracy in their implementation of emergency measures. As the executive expanded its power, the legislature and the judiciary were limited in their ability to oversee the measures and their implementation. Thus, hybrid regimes in Albania did not fully meet all four principles of legality, a bounded timeframe for emergency measures, necessity, and distributed power with checks on executive action.