In contemporary liberal democracies, the distinction between what counts as ordinary political activity and what belongs to the realm of exception has grown increasingly difficult to discern. What once appeared as a temporary disruption of the democratic order now becomes part of the field in which decisions are made. The exception is no longer an external event but a condition that shapes ordinary political activity. Carl Schmitt’s thinking is useful in this context because he defines sovereignty as the capacity to decide when existing procedures no longer organise conflict and when a direct intervention becomes necessary. When institutions fail to produce clear outcomes, the actor who claims the authority to define the situation occupies a distinct position. This becomes tangible with Donald Trump, who operates in this space by treating institutional friction not as something to correct but as evidence that only decisive action can restore political clarity. As confidence in procedural order weakens and perceived institutional legitimacy declines, this modality presents itself as a plausible response to the current crisis of liberalism. In this configuration, the boundary between ordinary administration and the perception of disorder blurs, and the decisive act returns as an available instrument rather than an exception held at the margins of constitutional life.

This dynamic is central to Schmitt’s argument in Political Theology (1922), which shows that legal orders rest on conditions that can fail. He notes that legal norms depend on circumstances that can collapse, and that every legal order presupposes the possibility of suspension when such a collapse occurs. The force of the norm is to presuppose a power capable of deciding its suspension. However, when interruptions reappear with regularity or settle into routine practice, the meaning shifts and they begin to reveal tensions that usually remain concealed in democratic systems. His reading of Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution shows how emergency provisions designed to protect the constitutional order can begin to reshape it once their use becomes recurrent (Boyd, 2011). In this context, legality continues to operate in form while sovereignty leans toward the actor who decides when the exception applies. For Schmitt, the point is that this vulnerability lies inside the constitutional order itself, and no institutional design can fully resolve it. Mechanisms conceived to stabilise the system in exceptional moments also possess the capacity to transform it when invoked without restraint. The question becomes whether the exception remains contained or whether it begins to condition the wider political environment.

Donald Trump openly combines a variety of registers to install a dynamic of permanent motion that cuts through institutional inertia. The signature elements of his governing style are executive orders, administrative instructions, improvised announcements and confrontations with institutions or political opponents. This continuous movement blurs the line between ordinary procedure and exceptional intervention. It provides him with room to manoeuvre because it allows political actions to be framed as responses to immediate challenges. The counterpart is that it creates a political environment where uncertainty becomes normal. Repetition of the exceptional decision gradually turns the decisive act into a force capable of organising the political environment, pulling political practice away from the deliberative expectations of democratic life. This echoes what Debord describes in The Society of the Spectacle (1967 / 1994) because appearances organise political relations and institutions operate within the space that perception creates.

Staging a state of permanent crisis, even when it is assembled from partial signals, shapes how institutions understand their position and how they position themselves within the political order. The performative action deliberately blurs the line that once separated routine from rupture. It forces institutions into interpretative judgement, and they must adjust to it as best they can. A statement delivered without preparation can redirect legislative priorities before any formal process even begins because institutions react to the signal rather than to its legal substance. Agencies move not because of the content itself but because the performative act, even in minimal form, alters their perception of what demands attention. In this configuration, the decision acquires force not through formal justification but through visibility, timing and the reactions it produces. What matters is not the legal status of the announcement but the perception that a shift has already taken place.

There are multiple examples across Trump’s two presidencies that make this dynamic visible inside administrative practice. The February 2025 memorandum directing federal agencies to review and suspend funding to organisations designated as harmful to the national interest is one of the clearest because it redraws the limits of civic activity without using the vocabulary usually associated with emergency politics. The manoeuvre is deliberately subtle. Without being clearly defined, the adversary emerges through classification in administrative acts rather than through open designation. In this context, sovereign practice is cloaked inside routine administrative procedure. The use of broad criteria such as what counts as harmful to national interest widens the interpretive latitude across........

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