Workshop on: Multiple, Complex & Cascading Extreme Conditions
Workshop Summary
Table of Contents
Cascading and Multiple Extreme Conditions: Current Framework – Amnon Reichman
Over the past twelve years, the Minerva Center for the Rule of Law under Extreme Conditions has developed a legal framework to examine the relationship between disasters and the rule of law. This framework conceptualizes disasters as processes unfolding across temporal stages—before, during, and after—and across different types of harmful events. A core insight concerns the need for precise legal terminology. Accordingly, a distinction is drawn between crisis, emergency, disaster, and extreme conditions, reflecting the law’s dependence on definitional clarity.
A crisis is understood as pressure placed on existing vulnerabilities, whether legal, social, or institutional. An emergency arises when resources are insufficient and a risk of failure is legally recognized, often triggering extraordinary legal powers. If such risks materialize, a disaster occurs, producing measurable social and physical harm. Extreme conditions describe situations in which the rule of law and ordinary social expectations can no longer function meaningfully.
The operation of law under emergency conditions is analyzed through adaptation of legal doctrines, derogations, and shifts in institutional authority, alongside temporal constraints such as sunset clauses. Attention is paid to the impact on fundamental rights and proportionality.
Beyond isolated events, multiple forms of crises are identified, including cascading, compound, and complex situations. Drawing on systems theory, structural vulnerabilities across social systems are highlighted as modes through which disasters are produced. Finally, democratic backsliding and trans-jurisdictionality are identified as central challenges, underscoring the fragility of the rule of law in an interconnected and crisis-prone world.
Discussion
The discussion addressed the causal relationship between disasters, democratic backsliding, and the rule of law. It was questioned whether democratic erosion should be understood as a consequence of disasters, an independent variable, or an element intrinsically intertwined with crisis dynamics. This distinction was considered crucial for identifying feedback mechanisms.
Technology was identified as an ambivalent factor, functioning both as a tool for improved crisis management and as a source of vulnerability through misinformation, social media dynamics, and illiberal narratives. Emphasis was placed on moving beyond descriptive systems theory toward causal analysis, focusing on how cascading and complex disasters affect the rule of law and how legal erosion, in turn, undermines resilience.
Socioeconomic inequality was highlighted as a structural vulnerability that intensifies disaster impacts and may increase disaster proneness. Gaps in legal scholarship were noted, particularly regarding natural disasters, agency, and the interaction between inequality, resilience, and institutional capacity, underscoring the need for empirical and comparative research.
Cascading and Compound Political Crises: Polarization, Institutions and Democratic Resilience – Fady Khoury
Polarization is conceptualized as a cascading political crisis whose trajectory depends on institutional features of the constitutional system. Rather than being reduced to attitudinal distance between partisan camps, polarization is understood as a path-dependent process that may evolve from ordinary democratic disagreement into reinforcing cleavages, breakdowns of democratic trust, and ultimately challenges to constitutional legitimacy. In this sense, polarization and divided societies are treated as points along a common spectrum rather than distinct phenomena, sharing dynamics of identity formation, zero-sum politics, and regime contestation.
Borrowing from disaster studies, the cascade metaphor highlights how triggering political events interact with institutional vulnerabilities, producing secondary crises in policymaking, judicial independence, and the rule of law. Institutions are thus framed as critical infrastructure. Majoritarian systems are identified as key vulnerabilities, as they enable permanent majorities to impose constitutional visions and intensify cascading effects. By contrast, consensus-oriented arrangements—such as proportional representation, coalition government, federalism, and constitutional rigidity—function as circuit breakers, altering opportunity structures and incentivizing negotiated solutions without preventing polarization itself.
The Belgian post-war case studies illustrate how institutional contexts shaped polarization’s trajectory: escalation occurred when majoritarian imposition was possible, while institutional constraints facilitated compromise under conditions of intense societal division. Agency, path dependence, and the normative distinction between destructive and democracy-enhancing polarization remain essential qualifications to the framework.
Respondent – Nadiv Mordechai
The response endorsed the conceptualization of polarization as a path-dependent cascading process shaped by institutional design. The theoretical synthesis was highlighted as a major strength, successfully integrating polarization studies, divided societies literature, constitutional design, and the cascade metaphor. Institutions were framed as critical infrastructure, with majoritarian arrangements facilitating escalation toward violence, while consensus institutions may create incentives for elite negotiation and dampen polarization at earlier stages. A key contribution was identified in situating divided societies within the polarization cascade, rather than treating them as analytically distinct. At the same time, limits of consensual mechanisms were emphasized, raising the question of when such institutions lose effectiveness under conditions of entrenched, pernicious polarization and which alternative stabilizing strategies may then remain available.
Startling Matryoshka in Rising Water: Polycrisis of Autocratisation and Emergency – Nadav Dagan
Autocratisation and states of emergency are conceptualized as mutually entangled dynamics within a global polycrisis rather than isolated or linear phenomena. States of emergency are understood as clusters of interacting stresses and vulnerabilities, often cascading across social systems. Autocratisation is framed as a directional process that exploits and intensifies these emergency dynamics, while simultaneously weakening democracy’s capacity to govern crises.
Democracy is identified as uniquely exposed, yet also uniquely positioned, as it functions as the central regulator of other social systems and possesses corrective mechanisms grounded in law, institutional design, and political morality. Damage to democratic institutions undermines both crisis governance and legitimacy, generating feedback loops that increase the likelihood and severity of emergencies. The rule of law is emphasized as critical in preserving democratic homeostasis amid fractal, cascading pressures in an interconnected world.
Respondent – Eli Salzberger
The response questioned the empirical assumptions underlying the argument, noting weak evidence for an increase in disasters or a causal link to democratic backsliding. It challenged claims about democratic superiority in crisis management and urged clearer distinctions between declared and actual emergencies, proposing instead to conceptualize democratic backsliding itself as a disaster requiring preventive governance tools.
Discussion
The discussion examined polarization, democracy, and crisis governance from empirical, institutional, and conceptual perspectives. It was emphasized that the severity of contemporary conflicts should be assessed by casualties rather than by the number of wars, highlighting recent armed conflicts as particularly consequential. Historical legacies and collective narratives were identified as shaping present political dynamics and constitutional resilience.
Skepticism was expressed toward both brute majoritarianism and overly rigid consensus arrangements, noting that consociational systems may generate elite cartels and long-term instability. The role of democracy in disaster management was debated, with mixed evidence presented: while democratic accountability can be strengthened by crises, authoritarian systems may achieve short-term effectiveness, particularly in rapid-response situations.
Several contributions stressed the importance of agency, arguing that autocratization requires strategic political actors who exploit structural vulnerabilities. Conceptual critiques questioned the overuse of “polarization,” proposing alternatives such as fragmentation or schism, and distinguishing elite-level from societal polarization. Finally, institutions were framed as both vulnerable infrastructure and potential stabilizers, with emphasis on feedback loops, narrative framing, and the limits of institutional solutions under conditions of deep societal division.
Weaponizing Wartime Population Movements in Lawfare – Magda Pacholska
The presentation examines wartime population movements through the analytical lenses of international law, crisis theory, and narrative framing. At its center lies the core question: “When are wartime population movements classified as violations of international law, which facilitates framing them as adjacent crises cascading from the armed conflict, rather than just a natural cascading impact of the primary crisis, namely the war itself?”
The analysis begins by distinguishing between actual and perceived crises, emphasizing the extent to which legal, political, and communicative framings shape public and institutional understandings of displacement. Drawing on historical developments from early codifications of the laws of war to contemporary international humanitarian and criminal law, the analysis traces the longstanding duality between voluntary flight from hostilities and forced population transfers. Modern jurisprudence, particularly from the ad hoc tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, is shown to have expanded the definition of “forcible,” thereby blurring the traditional boundary between voluntary and involuntary movement and creating interpretive ambiguities.
These ambiguities, combined with evolving legal doctrines on occupation and displacement, enable inconsistent applications of crisis labels across different conflicts. A comparative exploration of displacement in Gaza and Ukraine illustrates how similar population movements can be framed divergently in international discourse, influenced by the rapid, media-oriented communication practices of UN human rights mechanisms and the broader politics of crisis construction. The argument advanced is that the indeterminate normative framework surrounding displacement facilitates the instrumentalization of wartime population movements for narrative and political purposes. The conclusion anticipates that, in the absence of renewed conceptual clarity, these inconsistencies are likely to persist and may intensify, given the widening interpretive space produced by recent revisions in authoritative commentaries on the law of armed conflict.
Discussion
Reflection on the extent to which civilian deaths and displacement should be analytically separated into distinct crises rather than viewed collectively as a single war-induced crisis. Importance of temporality: do displacement dynamics occur simultaneously with hostilities or as longer-term cascading effects. Identification of a unique tension between two humanitarian goals: protecting civilian lives (which may require evacuation) versus avoiding displacement (which is itself harmful). Need to make this tension explicit in the argument.
Call for deeper empirical comparison between Ukraine and Gaza, including clearer evidence on population movements and on statements about international crimes. Recognition that unequal treatment of similar cases does not automatically determine how they should be normatively assessed. Consideration of intent (protection vs. demographic engineering) as relevant to evaluating displacement policies.
Question whether the distinction between voluntary flight and forcible transfer is analytically necessary, given that both ultimately hinge on the same exception clauses (security or imperative military reasons).
Discussion of narrative framings, historical memories (e.g., Nakba, Soviet-era transfers), and how these shape perceptions of crises. Concern that framing can influence understandings of the rule of law and create space for manipulation. Mention of displacement as part of broader cascading disasters, including natural hazards, and the potential value of comparing across different types of crises.
Weimar Republic and Nowday Israel – Anne van Aaken
A comparative examination of Weimar Germany and contemporary Israel was undertaken with a focus on institutional vulnerability, socio-economic and socio-psychological crisis, and the failure of the political Left. In the Weimar case, several structural weaknesses in the 1919 Constitution created conditions under which democracy could be dismantled through legal means. Most critically, Article 48 enabled presidential rule by emergency decree without parliamentary approval. After 1930, this mechanism became routine, establishing a precedent that was exploited following the Reichstag fire to suspend civil liberties. The presidency was further empowered through authority over government formation, parliamentary dissolution, and military command, facilitating a shift from parliamentary to presidential rule. Pure proportional representation without thresholds produced extreme fragmentation, unstable coalitions, and early parliamentary access for radical parties, while the absence of “militant democracy” allowed anti-system actors to operate unchecked.
These institutional vulnerabilities interacted with profound socio-economic crises. Post-war demobilization, reparations, hyperinflation, and later the Great Depression generated mass unemployment, loss of savings, and systemic insecurity. Economic instability was compounded by social-psychological factors, including the “stab-in-the-back” myth, humiliation associated with the Versailles Treaty, fear of social disintegration, and the appeal of scapegoating narratives. Anti-Semitism, authoritarian dispositions, and the promise of a unifying Volksgemeinschaft provided emotional relief and political mobilization.
The inability of the Left to stabilize democracy was attributed to deep fragmentation between the SPD and KPD, mutual hostility, and refusal to cooperate even against the Nazi threat. Early alliances between the SPD and conservative elites undermined its legitimacy, while the KPD’s sectarianism and revolutionary strategy further weakened democratic resistance. Neither camp articulated a compelling democratic alternative capable of mobilizing broad social coalitions.
While Israel differs institutionally, parallels were identified in political fragmentation, narrative polarization, the role of crisis rhetoric, and the difficulty of mobilizing a divided Left, suggesting that constitutional design may function as a temporary bulwark rather than a permanent safeguard.
Discussion
The discussion focused on how institutional design, crisis conditions, and political agency interact in processes of democratic erosion, drawing lessons from the Weimar–Israel comparison. It was argued that the intensity of contemporary conflicts should be assessed primarily by casualties rather than by the number of wars, with recent conflicts representing a marked escalation. Historical narratives and collective memories were identified as enduring forces that shape political behavior and constitutional stability.
Doubts were raised about both unchecked majoritarianism and rigid consensus arrangements. While consensus institutions may mitigate polarization, they can also generate elite cartels and long-term instability. The capacity of democracy to manage crises was assessed as context-dependent: in some cases crises enhance democratic accountability, while in others authoritarian regimes may achieve short-term effectiveness.
Strong emphasis was placed on agency. Democratic backsliding was described as a strategic process driven by political actors who exploit institutional vulnerabilities rather than as an automatic outcome of crises. Conceptual concerns were raised about the overuse of “polarization,” with calls to distinguish elite-level from societal dynamics or to consider alternative concepts such as fragmentation or schism. Institutions were ultimately framed as fragile but crucial stabilizers whose effectiveness depends on narratives, trust, and the depth of social division.
Emergency Justice: The Erosion of Judicial Review in Detention Hearings during Times of War and Crisis – Benny Newman
Judicial oversight in pretrial detention during wartime was examined through a comparison between arrests for online war-related expression and arrests arising from anti-government protests. It was shown that emergency conditions reshaped core principles of criminal procedure, particularly the separation of powers and the requirement of meaningful judicial review.
In cases concerning online expression related to the October 2023 war, detention was frequently authorized with minimal scrutiny. Courts were found to rely on generalized assumptions derived from the emergency context, such as heightened dangerousness or abstract investigative needs, without closely examining whether reasonable suspicion of an offenseexisted. Content was often not assessed in substance, alternatives to detention were rarely considered, and detention functioned as a quasi-punitive measure. This approach was reinforced by institutional convergence: prosecutorial oversight was weakened after broad authorization was granted to police to investigate speech offenses without prior approval, and courts tended to align with enforcement narratives emphasizing security and national emergency.
In sharp contrast, protest-related detentions were subjected to strict judicial review. Freedom of expression and the right to protest were repeatedly emphasized as fundamental constitutional rights. Arrest grounds were narrowly interpreted, police conduct was closely scrutinized, and suspects were often released without conditions. Even during wartime, courts insisted that disruption, dangerousness, and investigative interference be demonstrated concretely and proportionately.
This divergence revealed how emergencies selectively erode legal safeguards. Judicial review did not collapse uniformly but fractured along substantive lines, depending on the perceived political meaning of the expression. The findings suggested that emergency governance fosters institutional convergence precisely where judicial distance is most needed, transforming detention hearings into sites where emergency narratives displace legal standards. As a result, checks and balances were shown to weaken not through formal suspension of law, but through routine judicial deference operating within the law itself.
Respondent – Nadiv Mordechai
The analysis was valued for its focus on lower-court practice and its engagement with classical emergency theory. It was suggested that the argument be strengthened by situating the findings within debates on democratic and administrative backsliding, particularly police politicization. Methodological limits were noted, including temporal, legal, and ethnic differences between the cases, alongside a recommendation to engage scholarship on policing under compound crises.
Disputing the Price of Loss: Valuation, Compensation, and Cascading Crises in Israel After October 7 – Uri Ansenberg
The presentation examined postwar reconstruction not as a phase that follows disaster, but as a distinct and prolonged form of emergency governance. Attention was directed to missile strikes in Israel/Palestine, where physical destruction is often brief, yet recovery unfolds through long administrative, material, and social processes. Central focus was placed on how standardized valuation practices, particularly the Dekel construction-cost calculator, translate wartime damage into compensable loss.
It was shown that Dekel operates as a national benchmark used by state authorities, appraisers, insurers, and courts to calculate repair costs. While essential for coordinating reconstruction under normal conditions, the system presumes stable markets, available labor, and functioning supply chains. Under wartime conditions, these assumptions fail. As a result, gaps emerge between authorized compensation and actual repair needs, forcing households to advance funds, incur debt, wait for approvals, or live amid ongoing repairs.
Reconstruction was thus described as cascading emergency: the initial strike triggers a secondary crisis that is temporal, material, administrative, spatial, and social. Valuation practices were shown to have performative power: numbers do not merely describe damage but actively shape who can return home, who remains displaced, and under what conditions recovery is possible.
Emphasis was placed on inequality. In areas with weak documentation or informal construction—especially in Palestinian localities—Dekel-based valuation often fails to capture lived damage, resulting in partial or denied compensation. Disputes and appeals were presented not as malfunctions but as integral to how the system operates.
Overall, the argument advanced was that compensation does not end crisis. Instead, valuation infrastructures reorganize and redistribute it, making reconstruction a central arena in which war, governance, and everyday life continue to intersect.
Respondent – Deborah Shmueli
The response highlighted the paper’s key contribution to understanding cascading crises within recovery systems themselves. It was argued that the primary cascade does not stem from the missile strike, but from entry into valuation and compensation regimes. Administrative classifications, temporal delays, material shortages, and legal categories were shown to redistribute and prolong emergency conditions. Valuation systems were thus identified as vulnerable infrastructures that actively generate crises, raising rule-of-law concerns through the gradual erosion of trust rather than overt authoritarian change.
Discussion
The discussion focused on how emergencies reshape administrative and judicial behavior through psychological dynamics such as fear, uncertainty, and self-justification, with explicit parallels to Weimar-era judicial deference. It was debated whether the cases constitute cascading crises or classical rule-of-law failures under emergency. Recovery processes were highlighted as potential sites where emergencies are reorganized and prolonged, producing new extreme conditions. Attention was drawn to institutional vulnerability, politicization of police and courts, infrastructural inequality affecting Arab communities, and the interaction between war, constitutional crisis, recovery governance, and democratic backsliding.
Brazil and Covid-19: cascading, complex and extreme conditions – Stephanie Assaf
Between 2019 and 2023, Brazil was examined as a case of democratic backsliding unfolding under overlapping crises, with particular attention to how the Covid-19 pandemic functioned as an extreme condition within an already fragile democratic context. The period was marked as the lowest point of Brazil’s democratic indicators since the 1988 Constitution, following a longer trajectory that began with mass protests in 2013 and intensified after the political rupture of 2016. Democratic erosion accelerated under the Bolsonaro presidency, coinciding with deep socio-economic inequalities, racialized vulnerabilities, and institutional fragility.
The pandemic did not initiate democratic decline but interacted with it, amplifying existing vulnerabilities. Governance during Covid-19 was characterized by systematic disinformation, denial of scientific expertise, attacks on universities and data-producing institutions, and the politicization of public health. Presidential rhetoric minimized the virus, promoted unproven treatments, and undermined coordinated federal responses, despite Brazil’s historically strong public health infrastructure and vaccination capacity. As a result, excess mortality was framed as a consequence not of institutional incapacity, but of deliberate political choices within an already degraded rule-of-law environment.
Crisis dynamics were conceptualized as overlapping and potentially cascading: democratic backsliding weakened institutional responses to the pandemic, while the pandemic further stressed democratic norms, accountability, and trust. Environmental deregulation, attacks on media and science, and the mobilization of conspiratorial narratives reinforced this dynamic. A brief comparative reflection with Israel highlighted different patterns of emergency governance, particularly regarding enforcement and civil liberties.
The period after January 2023, including the failed coup attempt and judicial accountability measures against Bolsonaro, was interpreted as evidence of residual institutional resilience. Nonetheless, the Brazilian case was presented as illustrating how extreme conditions can intensify democratic erosion while also revealing the limits and possibilities of recovery.
Respondent – Amnon Reichman
Conceptual precision was emphasized in evaluating Brazil’s experience. It was questioned whether Covid-19 qualified as an “extreme condition” in the strict analytical sense, since fears of societal collapse were strongest only at the pandemic’s outset and differed across national contexts. Democratic backsliding and the pandemic were therefore characterized primarily as compound crises rather than clearly cascading ones, given the limited evidence of direct causal interaction. Nonetheless, potential cascading dynamics were identified in the erosion of expertise, populist anti-elitism, and systematic distrust of science promoted during the Bolsonaro period. Attention was also drawn to Brazil’s position within transnational illiberal networks and to the notion of “inverted libertarianism,” whereby calls for a smaller state do not empower democratic self-governance but instead facilitate authoritarian and plutocratic capture. Structural inequality and vulnerability were highlighted as persistent background conditions shaping these dynamics.
Discussion
The discussion revisited the conceptual boundaries between cascading, compound, and complex crises, using the Brazilian case to test the framework. It was argued that recovery and response phases cannot be cleanly separated from emergencies, since recovery processes may reorganize and prolong crisis conditions rather than resolve them. Several participants questioned whether democratic backsliding and the pandemic interacted causally or merely coincided, suggesting that stronger empirical evidence is needed to establish cascading effects. Others emphasized that cascading may occur when institutional degradation persists without correction, particularly through psychological shock, erosion of expertise, and normalization of emergency reasoning.
Attention was drawn to the role of constitutional crisis, police politicization, and preparedness imaginaries, including how pre-war and pre-pandemic scenarios shaped state responses. Structural and infrastructural inequalities were highlighted as producing uneven outcomes through routine governance rather than overt discrimination. The tax authority, courts, and police were contrasted to show how different institutions responded unevenly to crisis pressures. Debate also focused on whether democratic backsliding itself should be conceptualized as a disaster, and whether recovery failures can generate new extreme conditions through distrust and social conflict. Overall, the discussion underscored the need for greater analytical precision, temporal sensitivity, and attention to institutional and psychological mechanisms when applying cascading-crisis concepts to democratic erosion.
David Alexander (Guest Lecture): Cascading and Complex Disasters
A wide argument was advanced that disaster risk is increasingly shaped by ideology, context, and the erosion of shared normative frameworks often described as a common Zeitgeist. It was suggested that progress under the Sendai Framework has stalled or even reversed, while interactions between conflict and disasters have moved from the margins to the center of risk analysis.
Disasters were framed as the outcome of political and administrative choices. Decisions not to install warning systems, not to enforce zoning regulations, or to ignore preparedness recommendations were highlighted, using recent flooding and long-standing patterns of regulatory weakening as illustrations. Vulnerability was presented as the central explanatory lens, with general vulnerability described as the condition from which more specific forms of vulnerability, such as exposure to floods, pandemics, or warfare, emerge.
Modern complexity was linked to growing dependence on interconnected networks, the presence of single points of failure, and the rise of manufactured realities amplified through digital media. The widening gap between perceived and objective reality was emphasized as a core governance challenge, for example when vaccine skepticism undermines herd immunity.
Cascading disasters were explained through escalation points and the propagation of failure through critical infrastructure. Examples such as Fukushima illustrated how secondary and indirect effects can become more consequential than the original triggering event.
Resilience was critically examined as increasingly unattainable under conditions of constant change. Greater emphasis was placed on reducing vulnerability, even though it remains difficult to measure directly. Finally, foresight was promoted as a structured way to explore plausible futures through scenarios and counterfactual analysis, since reliance on past disasters alone was considered inadequate in a rapidly evolving risk landscape.
Discussion
The discussion focused on the substance of the lecture’s arguments about disaster, vulnerability, and governance. It was emphasized that disaster risk is shaped less by singular events than by ideology, regulation, corruption, and long-term political and economic choices. Questions were raised about how broad notions of context and vulnerability can be operationalized in policy when governments often deny or ignore the structural causes of risk.
The limits of comparison were debated, particularly between so-called natural disasters and human-made crises such as war or democratic erosion. It was argued that corruption and regulatory failure are central drivers even in earthquakes and floods. The collapse of trust, expertise, and shared notions of truth was identified as a key vulnerability, intensified by populist strategies and misinformation.
Attention was also given to the legal dimension of cascading crises: law shapes mitigation, response, and recovery, but legal frameworks themselves can amplify vulnerability. Examples from Italy illustrated both the potential and the dangers of emergency legislation. Finally, skepticism was expressed toward idealized ideas of community resilience, pointing instead to inequality, elite capture, and housing insecurity as decisive constraints.
Summary by Dr.