Biopower in the age of the pandemic: the politics of COVID-19 in Denmark

ABSTRACT

The exceptional forms of state power mobilized under COVID-19 have attracted scholarly attraction and created important insights on the pandemic politics. However, it seems that the current understanding tends to regard the states’ responses as a zero-sum game between two powers only, a game in which liberal rule in varying degrees is traded for raw sovereign power. Inspired by the notion of biopower, this article aims to provide a more nuanced account of the various powers invoked to handle the pandemic. Based on the case of Denmark, it is argued that three forms of power were mobilized: sovereignty, discipline and security mechanisms. Yet, indirect security mechanisms informed by epidemiological knowledge and modelling have played a far more comprehensive role than the two other power mechanisms. In a complex interaction with epidemiological expertize, liberal governmentalities limited the mobilization of sovereignty and discipline and, instead, tended to endorse indirect security mechanisms.

KEYWORDS:

• Biopolitics
• state power
• pandemics
• epidemiological regulations
• Foucault

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The term biopolitics was not invented by Foucault. It was used both in Ancient Greece and by Swedish and German geopoliticians in the 1920s, though in very different ways and for very different purposes than Foucault (Esposito 2008, pp. 14–8).

2 Prior to the pandemic, Denmark was the largest producer of mink fur in the world, with annual exports of around €500 million. In total, 2.5 million Danish mink were culled on 800 farms.

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Notes on contributors

Peter Triantafillou

Peter Triantafillou is a professor in public administration. His research interests are with power-knowledge regimes within public health policies and performance assessment systems.