The recent global crises caused by the rise of terrorism, the mass migration or the public health issues brought to the fore the topic of emergency powers and the risks lurking behind resorting to these “exceptional” measures for the liberal order. These global challenges fueled academic debates on the impact of the use of emergency powers on societies. The project aims to contribute to this international debate by analyzing the functioning of the state of siege mechanisms at the grassroots level in Romania during the 1930s and early 1940s. Based on a broad documentation within the archives created by the military courts, the police, the gendermarie, and the secret services in interwar and World War II Romania, the project will focus on the following research directions: the trajectories of the state of siege legislation in Romania during the interwar and the World War II periods and the genealogy of its main concepts; the public narratives related to inner and outside dangers to state security legitimizing the resorting to state of siege; the interpretation and implementation of the state of siege by the military, the police, the gendarmerie, and the secret services; the impact of state of siege mechanisms on the gradual dismantling of the liberal order defined by the 1923 Romanian Constitution and the instalment of King Carol II and Antonescu’s dictatorships.
