Sanitizing a crisis: The three dimensions of an enhanced regime of accumulation

• Published date: 01 July 2023
• Author: Ignasi Bernat Molina,Sergi Cutillas Márquez
• Date: 01 July 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/lapo.12224

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Sanitizing a crisis: The three dimensions of an

enhanced regime of accumulation

Ignasi Bernat Molina

1

| Sergi Cutillas M

arquez

2

1

Facultat d’Economia i Empresa,

Departament de Sociologia, Universitat de

Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain

2

Facultat d’Economia i Empresa,

Departament d’Història Econòmica,

Institucions, Política i Economia Mundial,

Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain

Correspondence

Ignasi Bernat Molina, Facultat d’Economia

i Empresa, Departament de Sociologia,

Universitat de Barcelona, Avinguda Diagonal

696 4ªplanta—Despatx 481 08034

Barcelona, Spain.

Email: ignasi.bernat@ub.edu

Abstract

In many western countries the Covid crisis has evolved

from a public health crisis toward an economic crisis.

Spain was no exception. Crises are always key

moments in the reconfiguration of the role of the

state, as this takes on new domains and functions.

Conceiving state’s role as a triad helps us understand-

ing its functioning. From the initial stage, state work

has been intense in order to mitigate its effects. But

the Spanish particularity is the specific articulation of

state apparatuses. As in previous crises, Spain has

deployed a significant activity to police the public order.

The policing of public spaces was tailored to ensure the

economic apparatuses remain unchallenged. A new

mode of regulation has been established to allow an

enhanced regime of capital accumulation through differ-

ent financial instruments. Despite the frequent neglect

of ideological state apparatuses, this paper exposes how

relevant they are in moments of impasse to produce a

new moral economy reassuring the hegemonic project of

the elites.

1|INTRODUCTION

Deep crises as the Covid-19 pandemic lead to periods of impasse and change. In times when

terror hits and normality is suspended all what is assumed obvious and logic can be challenged

and even long established constitutional orders can be turned upside down. Crises are at the

same time opportunities and threats to the existing accumulation regimes and their power struc-

tures. For this reason, the ruling class in control of the state, manages and polices crises trying

to reset the established order in its own favor.

DOI: 10.1111/lapo.12224

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits

use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or

adaptations are made.

©2023 The Authors. Law & Policy published by University of Denver and Wiley Periodicals LLC.

414 Law & Policy. 2023;45:414–429.

wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/lapo

Indeed, crises can be used to reset the engines of accumulation, as they allow for the

reconfiguration of the state, since it in these moments that it can acquire new domains and

functions (O’Connor, 1984). In addition, crises are also periods of capital restructuring and con-

centration, technological transformation and working class recompositing (Brancaccio

et al., 2018). It is in these moments that one can glimpse through the paraphernalia and see the

nature of the system, as some of its elementary functions become prominent. In the case of

Spain, the early stages of the pandemic brought these most essential functions of the state to the

surface.

In fact, in March 2020, the situation rapidly turned from a public health crisis into a possi-

ble global-scale economic and societal collapse. From this moment on, for most states of the

center of the world system, striking a balance between despotic policies, and preventing the col-

lapse of their regimes of accumulation, would become their main priority and also a challenge,

and even more so, since policies to address the crisis in the short-term should ideally prepare the

ground for a longer-term period of capital accumulation. Indeed, the enhancement of a regime

of accumulation requires a great deal of state intervention, which in this case included different

types of policies at local, regional, state, and transnational level.

This paper will analyze the different types of interventions by the Spanish national state in

the early stages of what has been called the Great Lockdown. These interventions were aimed

at, first, strongly coerce the population into obeying medical authorities and national state

authorities more generally; and second, securing economic flows to avoid widespread economic

collapse.

The paper will be divided in three sections. First, we will analyze the despotic securement

of the social order by the Spanish national state. The authoritarian response consisting of

shutdowns of the economy and society were generalized across the world. However, Spain has

been among the most repressive national states with its portrayal of the crisis as a security crisis

or even a war, relying heavily on its military and police during the period. This is not new, since

as the Spanish state has often in the past deployed exaggerate and even despotic uses of violence

to reassure public trust in the ordinary functioning of the state (Bernat & Whyte, 2021).

The explicit authoritarianism exerted is directly related to the weak ideological hegemony of

its core institutions, at least in many of the regions of the state, which runs in parallel to and

interacts with the general weaknesses in accumulation.

Second, and less visible, but even more important, is related to the necessity to keep

the economy alive. This involved massive state intervention at all levels including wide range of

legislation and policies aimed at maintaining economic flows (credit guarantees to firms, debt

moratoriums, subsides to the self-employed, and temporary furloughs schemes for workers) and

discerning the economic sectors that were allowed to operate during the lockdowns.

Third and final, we analyze the ideological apparatus of the state. This dimension is

neglected from most of the accounts of state capacities. This paper will illuminate how ideologi-

cal apparatuses crucially provide moral guidance at moments of impasse to comfort the popul a-

tion by means of different interventions ranging from the press conference and its tailored

scenes with the police, military, and bio-medical personnel, a new rhetoric employed around the

economic plans supported by the Next Generation European funds and rescue packages, with a

renewed focus upon the nation as a community to be protected because it guarantees our conti-

nuity. During this period, the legitimating apparatus of the state has combined fearmongering

and coercion with the peddling of hope in the nation, in this case, the imaginary community

that was united against a common enemy, the virus. This imagery has often been attached to

references to the place of Spain into the international community, especially as a member of the

EU. This transnationalist pro-European rhetoric was often linked to the economic interventions

of the EU, like the bond purchase and loan programmes of ECB, and later on, the NGEU

joint-fiscal programme. This transnationalist narrative emphasized the safety provided by the

international community in moments of crisis, allowing for global coordinated responses and

BERNAT MOLINA and CUTILLAS M

´

ARQUEZ 415