Biopolitical Leviathan Understanding State Power in the Era of COVID-19 through the Weberian-Foucauldian Theory of the State

• Published in: Theoria (Pietermaritzburg) Vol. 71; no. 178; pp. 48 - 74
• Main Author: Gjerde, Lars Erik Løvaas
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: Afrikaans; English
• Published: New York Berghahn Books, Inc 01-03-2024
• Subjects: Biopolitics; Coronaviruses; COVID-19; Discipline; Disease control; Pandemics; Politics; Power; Society; Sovereignty; State power; Theory
• ISSN: 0040-5817; 1558-5816
• DOI: 10.3167/th.2024.7117803

Abstract
The coronavirus pandemic made the biopolitics of infection control the core object of states around the world. Globally, states governed spheres usually free of state control, implementing various restrictions, closing down society in the process. This is possible due to the state's capacities to act through and over society, grounded in the state's powers. I argue that while the pandemic has led to useful and interesting state-centric Foucauldian literature on the politics of COVID-19, this literature has not fully taken the theoretical lessons of the pandemic into account. Explicating these lessons, I discuss how the pandemic invites us to reconsider the Foucauldian approach to the state. The purpose of this article is to combine the Foucauldian theory of power with a Weberian state theory based on Michael Mann's work on the state and the sources of power, so to lay the foundations for a Weberian-Foucauldian theory of the state.