“Permacrisis” has become the defining buzzword of an age marked by rolling emergencies-financial shocks, pandemics, climate breakdown, democratic backsliding, and war.Yet while the language of permanent crisis has quickly entered everyday speech, its implications for how we are governed, how power is exercised, and how public trust is won or lost remain poorly understood.
Policing the Permacrisis, a collaboration between UCL’s Uncovering Politics series and The Political Quarterly, sets out to change that. Bringing together leading academics, commentators, and practitioners, the project probes how states respond when exceptional measures become the norm, and asks what happens to accountability, civil liberties, and political debate when “crisis mode” never truly ends. In an era where emergency laws, surveillance technologies, and rapid-fire decision-making risk becoming routine, this initiative examines who is doing the “policing” of the permacrisis-and who is, or is not, policing them.
Understanding the politics of permanent crisis at UCL
On campus, the language of crisis has shifted from describing rare disruptions to framing the everyday.Budget squeezes, contested restructurings, disputes over casualisation and pay, the surveillance of protest, and rapid-fire policy changes are all narrated as unavoidable responses to external shocks. In practice, this produces a political landscape where emergency logics become routine and managerial decisions are insulated from scrutiny. Staff and students repeatedly find their options narrowed by phrases like “no choice” and “sector-wide pressures,” while strategic priorities-from security expansion to estate redevelopment-are fast-tracked under the banner of urgency. The result is less a temporary turbulence than a settled mode of governance in which uncertainty is carefully managed from the top down.
What emerges is a quietly codified order of winners and losers within this ongoing turbulence. Certain forms of knowledge and activity are consistently protected,while others are left exposed to cuts,outsourcing,or disciplinary oversight. This is visible in how resources, visibility and risk are distributed across the institution:
- Critical research and protest are increasingly monitored and securitised.
- Administrative burden is shifted onto precarious or junior staff in the name of adaptability.
- Student voice is invited into consultation while key choices remain firmly centralised.
| Area | Shielded in Crisis | Exposed in Crisis |
|---|---|---|
| Security & surveillance | Budgets and powers expand | Protest and dissent constrained |
| Academic labor | Core brand disciplines stabilised | Precarious staff and small units cut |
| Decision-making | Executive authority consolidated | Collegial governance sidelined |
How policing strategies shape public trust in times of overlapping emergencies
As climate shocks collide with public health scares and economic strain, every tactical choice on the street becomes a referendum on legitimacy. Communities quickly notice whether officers lean first on dialog or deterrence, whether data-driven deployments mean protection or profiling, and whether emergency powers expire when promised or quietly become the new normal. Patterns of stop-and-search, the visibility of body-worn cameras, and the way mutual aid groups are treated during crises all feed into a fast-forming narrative: is the police a partner in managing uncertainty, or another source of it? In neighbourhoods already marked by historical over-policing, even well-intentioned surge operations can be read as occupation rather than reassurance, especially when not backed by transparent communication and clear legal safeguards.
- Proportional use of force during protests and lockdowns
- Responsiveness to calls in deprived versus affluent areas
- Clarity of public messaging about new powers
- Visibility of autonomous oversight and complaint routes
| Strategy | Short-term effect | Trust trajectory |
|---|---|---|
| Militarised crowd control | Rapid street clearance | Sharp decline, lingering resentment |
| Community co-design of responses | Slower, negotiated order | Gradual, durable gains |
| Data-led patrols without disclosure | Visible activity, opaque logic | Unease and suspicion in targeted areas |
In a so‑called permacrisis, trust is not built in grand gestures but in the accumulation of small, consistent behaviours: officers explaining why they are there, making fewer but higher-quality stops, and being seen to hold their own colleagues to account. Overlapping emergencies amplify any inconsistency; a force that is conciliatory at climate protests but uncompromising in migrant neighbourhoods will find its credibility evaporating across both. The question is less whether policing is “tough” or “soft”, and more whether it is recognisably fair, predictable, and answerable-qualities that ultimately determine whether citizens comply because they must, or because they believe the law is on their side.
Uncovering the limits of current governance through UCL and Political Quarterly research
Drawing on a series of in-depth studies,the UCL Uncovering Politics project and Political Quarterly reveal how institutions built for a slower,more predictable era are straining under overlapping crises. Researchers highlight a pattern: policy frameworks designed around single-issue shocks are being stretched to handle complex chains of disruption, from climate emergencies to financial instability and geopolitical tension. Across Whitehall, devolved governments and regulatory bodies, decision-makers are operating with outdated risk models, fragmented accountability and limited capacity for public engagement. The result is a governance ecosystem that often reacts late, communicates poorly and struggles to link short-term firefighting with long-term strategy.
- Fragmented responsibilities across central, local and agency levels
- Short political time horizons clashing with long-run risks
- Underused expert advice and data in fast-moving crises
- Thin democratic oversight of emergency powers
| Research Focus | Key Finding | Policy Tension |
|---|---|---|
| Crisis law | Broad emergency powers | Speed vs scrutiny |
| Public trust | Sharp dips after shocks | Control vs consent |
| Data use | Uneven analytics capacity | Innovation vs privacy |
These findings converge on a central insight: the UK’s constitutional and administrative settlement is ill-equipped for a rolling state of emergency. Instead of a coherent architecture for managing systemic risk, the research maps a patchwork of ad hoc committees, temporary taskforces and opaque interdepartmental deals, often bypassing traditional parliamentary channels. This fuels a cycle in which each new crisis justifies more exceptional measures while leaving underlying weaknesses untouched.By surfacing these limits with empirical detail, the UCL and Political Quarterly collaboration sets the stage for a harder conversation about what kind of democratic state is needed to govern a permanent emergency-and what trade-offs citizens are willing to accept.
Policy recommendations for democratic accountability and resilient crisis management
Building institutions that can withstand overlapping emergencies requires more than technical fixes; it demands mechanisms that keep power answerable to citizens even when sirens are blaring. Governments should commit to sunset clauses on emergency powers, automatic parliamentary reviews of exceptional measures, and clear legal thresholds for activating (and deactivating) crisis regimes. Independent oversight bodies, equipped with real investigatory powers and guaranteed access to data, can track how policing, border control and health surveillance are deployed, while public-facing dashboards translate complex risk assessments into accessible information for journalists, civil society and local communities. To make this enduring, funding settlements for regulators, ombuds institutions and local authorities must be ring‑fenced from short-term political bargaining, ensuring that those who scrutinise the state are not the first casualties of fiscal austerity.
Democratic accountability in a “permacrisis” also hinges on who gets heard before, during and after shocks. Policymakers should embed structured participation into crisis planning, using citizens’ assemblies, community briefings and co-designed protocols with trade unions and frontline workers. This is not a deliberative luxury but a practical hedge against groupthink and securitised reflexes. Key reforms include:
- Transparency by default in emergency procurement, with open-contracting standards.
- Clear chains of command between national, regional and local authorities to avoid blame‑shifting.
- Data-ethics impact assessments for policing and surveillance technologies, published in advance.
- Protected spaces for dissent, ensuring that protest and investigative journalism are not collateral damage of crisis laws.
| Challenge | Accountability Tool |
|---|---|
| Fast-tracked emergency powers | Time-limited mandates and mandatory reviews |
| Opaque security decisions | Independent oversight with public reporting |
| Public distrust and fatigue | Participatory crisis planning and citizens’ panels |
Final Thoughts
As the language of “permacrisis” hardens into common sense, the stakes of how we police – and are policed by – this new normal could scarcely be higher. The discussions hosted by UCL’s Uncovering Politics series in partnership with The Political Quarterly make clear that what looks like technical management of emergencies is actually a series of deeply political choices: about which risks are prioritised, whose security counts, and which rights might potentially be suspended in the name of resilience.
Far from being an certain response to turbulent times, the emerging infrastructure of crisis governance is being designed in real time, often with limited scrutiny. That creates an opening, as several contributors emphasised, for reasserting democratic oversight, rebuilding public trust, and insisting that accountability does not disappear when the sirens start. If crisis is now the rule rather than the exception, then understanding – and contesting – the politics of how it is policed will be central to the future of liberal democracy.
What the UCL-PQ collaboration ultimately underlines is that the “permacrisis” is not only a test of institutional capacity, but of political creativity. Whether the coming decade is defined by permanent emergency or by a renewed commitment to transparent, participatory governance will depend on choices being made now, often behind closed doors. Bringing those decisions into the open is the first step towards ensuring that,even in an age of endless crises,power remains answerable to the public it claims to protect.
