Decisionism
Carl Schmitt’s political theory holding that sovereignty consists in the power to decide the exception — to declare a state of emergency and suspend normal legal order; widely adopted by the New Right as a theoretical resource for authoritarian executive power
What It Is
Decisionism is Schmitt’s answer to the question “what is sovereignty?” His answer: “Sovereign is he who decides on the state of exception.” (Politische Theologie, 1922)
The key move is the concept of the Ausnahmezustand — the state of exception, emergency, or exception. Normal legal order depends on a prior decision about what counts as normal; in a true crisis, someone must decide to suspend the rules. That decider is the sovereign. Parliamentary procedure and constitutional norms presuppose a stable order; when that order is genuinely threatened, decision comes before procedure.
This is not just an empirical observation but a normative claim: Schmitt argues that liberal constitutionalism’s pretense of rule-of-law neutrality is a fiction — in genuine crises, someone always decides, and pretending otherwise is naive or dishonest.
Schmitt’s Friend/Enemy Distinction
Closely related to decisionism is Schmitt’s friend/enemy distinction (from The Concept of the Political, 1932): the defining characteristic of “the political” is the distinction between friend and enemy. Politics is not about interests or values but about collective identities in potential conflict. A political community constitutes itself by identifying who it is against.
This framework is deeply anti-liberal: liberalism tries to dissolve the friend/enemy distinction into economic competition and moral debate, but Schmitt argues this merely masks political reality without changing it. The political always returns.
Decisionism in the New Right
The New Right’s appropriation of Schmitt operates on multiple levels:
Practical-political: The Fight is Now and The Flight 93 Election both deploy decisionist logic — the claim that the normal rules don’t apply because a genuine state of emergency exists. America faces existential destruction; the time for constitutional procedure is over; someone must decide.
Theoretical: Adrian Vermeule’s Integration from Within and Common Good Constitutionalism draw on Schmitt’s critique of liberal neutrality. The pretense that law is neutral between competing visions of the good is, Vermeule agrees with Schmitt, a liberal ideology masquerading as procedure.
Hard Right: Curtis Yarvin and the Bronze Age Pervert draw more directly on Schmittian decisionism in their advocacy for techno-monarchy and authoritarian leadership — the “Caesar” who cuts through parliamentary paralysis.
The Schmitt Problem
Field identifies what she calls “the Schmitt problem” as one of the New Right’s central intellectual tensions: you cannot cleanly separate Schmitt’s political theory from his biography (Nazi jurist, 1933 NSDAP member) or from the uses to which his framework lends itself. Decisionism, in practice, means: whoever has power can declare the emergency that justifies breaking the rules.
The New Right thinkers who use Schmitt — Vermeule, Deneen, Ahmari — typically do not reckon fully with this problem. They borrow the critique of liberalism without confronting what follows when the “decider” is not your preferred philosopher-king but an authoritarian who has captured the state of exception for his own ends.
Cross-References
- Carl Schmitt — originator of decisionism
- Postliberalism — the movement that most extensively borrows from Schmitt
- Adrian Vermeule — borrows Schmittian critique of liberal neutrality
- The Fight is Now — deploys decisionist emergency logic
- The Flight 93 Election — deploys decisionist emergency logic
- Curtis Yarvin — Hard Right figure who draws on decisionism for techno-monarchy
- MAGA New Right — the movement shaped by Schmittian assumptions