Authors : Suhaana Khanna

Volume/Issue : Volume 11 - 2026, Issue 10 - October

Google Scholar : https://tinyurl.com/2258uspu

DOI : https://doi.org/10.38124/ijisrt/26Oct313

Note : A published paper may take 4-5 working days from the publication date to appear in PlumX Metrics, Semantic Scholar, and ResearchGate.

Abstract : Did COVID-19 normalise authoritarianism, or did it expose political tendencies already present? This paper distinguishes authoritarian regime change from a shift in the threshold at which unusually intrusive state action becomes acceptable. It develops the author’s three-stage model—emergency acceptance → institutionalisation → psychological internalisation—through an interdisciplinary engagement with Nye, Lukes, Foucault, and Galtung. A structured comparison of Hungary, India, the United States, Taiwan, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom examines emergency legislation, digital monitoring, minority scapegoating, and democratic resistance. Brazil and protest episodes in Germany, Australia, and the Netherlands provide supplementary contrasts. The evidence is evaluated on two sides: mechanisms that could make exceptional control ordinary, and institutional, social, and policy developments that interrupt that progression. Documented expansions of executive authority and health-data systems support a conditional normalisation argument; legal reversals, data-deletion commitments, continuing dissent, and policy withdrawal constrain it. Evidence for lasting psychological internalisation is substantially weaker than evidence for emergency acceptance or administrative embedding. The pandemic is therefore best understood as an enabling and sometimes accelerating condition, not a sufficient cause of authoritarian transformation. Its political significance lies in the experience of an altered boundary of legitimate intervention, whose persistence depends on oversight, technological design, equal treatment, and citizens’ continuing ability to question authority.

Keywords : COVID-19; Authoritarian Practices; Emergency Governance; Normalisation; Surveillance; Political Power; Democratic Resilience.

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