Democratization

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The biopolitical president?: Sovereign power and

democratic erosion in El Salvador

Jeffrey T. Hallock & Charles T. Call

To cite this article: Jeffrey T. Hallock & Charles T. Call (2021): The biopolitical president?:
Sovereign power and democratic erosion in El Salvador, Democratization, DOI:
10.1080/13510347.2021.1949295

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/13510347.2021.1949295

Published online: 09 Jul 2021.

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DEMOCRATIZATION
https://doi.org/10.1080/13510347.2021.1949295

The biopolitical president?: Sovereign power and

democratic erosion in El Salvador
Jeffrey T. Hallock and Charles T. Call
School of International Service, American University, Washington, DC, USA

ABSTRACT
States have adopted a range of policies to address the COVID-19 pandemic. Some,
mainly democracies like New Zealand and South Korea, took quick health measures
without curbing citizen rights. Others, especially those led by populists like
Bolsonaro and Erdogan, denied the seriousness of the health crisis even as they
curbed political and civil rights. El Salvador is virtually unique in its COVID-19
response, combining a strong rhetorical commitment to health measures with clear
efforts to undermine democratic controls and rights. President Nayib Bukele
adopted an early travel ban and publicly vilified those who broke curfew by
sending them and all who tested positive to quarantine centers for 30 days. He
derided and defied Constitutional Chamber decisions against such practices,
ordered militarized actions, and crowded gang-affiliated prisoners together in
humiliating ways that risked exposure to COVID-19. We examine how Bukele’s
policies conform to, and seemingly exemplify, Michel Foucault’s theoretical
concepts of biopolitics and disciplinary power. However, the Salvadoran case also
challenges key features of Foucault’s theory, suggesting the need to modify his
Western assumptions about highly institutionalized states. Our analysis suggests
that strong leaders can undercut citizen rights and agency, visible at the
intersection of biopolitical social theory and democratic backsliding.

ARTICLE HISTORY Received 18 December 2020; Accepted 25 June 2021

KEYWORDS biopower; disciplinary power; Foucault; Bukele; El Salvador; authoritarian; backsliding; rights;
populism; performative

Introduction
How do we understand power in light of the global spread of COVID-19 with its far-
reaching impact on social, political, and economic life? The infectious disease has
raised questions about theoretical approaches to understanding policy responses
across different societies. “Biopolitics,” a concept made famous by Michel Foucault
in the 1970s, has become an obvious theoretical referent for scholars analysing
responses to a pandemic that altered humans’ lives and livelihoods more than any
in a century.
Foucault developed his theory of biopolitics to explain how “making live” and
“letting die” among different segments of the population is a central aspect of contem-
porary political power. Foucault locates biopower in the technocratic administration of

CONTACT Jeffrey T. Hallock jh1227a@american.edu

© 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
2 J. T. HALLOCK AND C. T. CALL

biological life, including how states use forecasts and statistical estimates to monitor
and manage births and deaths.1 Soon after COVID-19 swept across the globe,
figures pertaining to the number of people infected, infection rate, the number of
people dead, death rate, and later vaccination rate became ubiquitous in the public
sphere and central for guiding state policy.
Numerous states’ COVID-19 responses focusing on the protection and adminis-
tration of biological life underscore the utility of a biopolitical lens to evaluate state
power during times of crisis. Accordingly, we use Foucault’s biopolitics as a starting
point, but we also examine other scholars’ theoretical interpretations of the concept
as well as how biopower intersects with other types of power during crises.
As its object of inquiry, this article chooses state policies framed in relation to
COVID-19. We conduct a critical evaluation of El Salvador’s COVID-19 policies
and executive actions, which represent an extreme, perhaps unique, case where Presi-
dent Nayib Bukele interlaces an expansion of his power and authority with a public
relations strategy designed to give the appearance of preserving biological life
among certain segments of the population, while degrading others. We draw on pol-
itical and historical scholarship on El Salvador as well as publicly available data includ-
ing Bukele’s public statements, policy documents, and court rulings.
Recent analyses have postulated several ways to differentiate policy responses to the
virus. A prominent line of understanding distinguishes states led by populist govern-
ments, such as Brazil, the USA, Turkey, and Mexico, neglecting or denying the serious-
ness of the disease and ignoring science in favour of political expediency, economic
gain, or just the stupidity of leaders. Such a view contrasts these approaches with
wealthy democracies that took the virus seriously. Regimes in Germany, South
Korea, and New Zealand adopted policies that prioritized the health of the population
without an apparent intent to jeopardize democratic checks and balances.2 Other
countries, like Sweden, dismissed or downplayed the health threat but did not seek
to undercut political opponents or democratic rule. El Salvador represents an
unusual instance of a democratic state that quickly adopted strong, health-prioritizing
policies to prevent and control COVID-19, accompanied by strict repressive policies,
militarized enforcement, and extended quarantines for those testing positive for
COVID-19 and suspect populations.3
We use two concepts or metrics to analyse El Salvador’s response. First, we use the
term “heath-prioritizing” to indicate policies were backed by communicating, at least,
a basic rhetorical justification for government actions to safeguard public health, in
contrast to leaders who equivocated or downplayed the need for containing the
virus. Therefore, health-prioritizing does not necessarily relate to outcomes or capacity
but could primarily be a messaging strategy to enhance public confidence in a state’s
response. Some of El Salvador’s policies lacked scientific justification, and the state is
accused of restricting, and even manipulating, data.4 Despite shortcomings in their
actual practices for confronting the spread of the disease, Bukele and his adminis-
tration were consistent in signaling policy choices that nominally prioritized health.
The second concept we use to understand El Salvador’s response is democratic con-
trols – specifically, whether policies undermine or affirm democratic controls on state
leaders and institutions. Certainly, states such as Hungary and the Philippines
advanced restrictive policies that prioritized health and undermined democratic con-
trols through actions including police repression, media restrictions, or executives’
retention of emergency powers.5 However, President Bukele distinguished himself
 DEMOCRATIZATION 3

from other leaders through repeated rebukes of attempted checks by other branches of
government, namely defying multiple Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court
rulings against some of his harshest practices. Moreover, Bukele drew on a health pro-
tection discourse precisely to justify his flouting of democratic controls. He is perhaps
unique in his linking of a health-prioritizing approach with democracy-defying pol-
icies, deftly and cynically weaving together the appearance of protecting large segments
of the population with an enhanced grip on power Table 1.
What can this case tell us? On the face of it, the case of El Salvador and its president
conform remarkably with Michel Foucault’s biopolitical theorizing about the inte-
gration of political power and the science of the human body. The state explicitly
invokes the need to protect the Salvadoran body politic, even if rights are violated
to do so. It not only punishes those who defy state power; it dehumanizes those indi-
viduals whose behaviour fails to conform to state emergency edicts. Taken to one
extreme, as theorized by Giorgio Agamben, such restrictions on social and political
life are precursors to an unyielding state of exception threatening citizens with con-
stant precarity.6
At the same time, the Salvadoran case challenges certain Eurocentric assumptions
found in Foucault’s writings regarding how some states expand and exercise biopower.
The case suggests that Foucault’s theory is less developed for societies whose state
agencies are weakly institutionalized. Here we see currents of Achille Mbembe’s
work on necropolitics, identifying how states can feel less constrained by legal or insti-
tutional rules on sovereign power used to exercise control over life and death.7
Examining how El Salvador’s weak institutional guardrails fail to constrain execu-
tive power from directly entering into biopolitics helps further develop the applica-
bility of biopolitical theory in less formally institutionalized states. Bukele’s ability to
shape public perception of the state’s pandemic response through “performative”
populism8—focusing on the appearance of competence – and to defy checks on his
power demonstrates how old forms of overt, sovereign power can combine with
more subtle forms of modern power to allow a strong, charismatic leader to exercise
influence over the population and state institutions.
Our article opens with a review of Foucault’s conceptions of disciplinary and bio-
political power, followed by situating Foucault and Agamben’s theories within con-
temporary debates concerning the coronavirus pandemic. We then examine
President Bukele’s public proclamations and policy decisions, offering a critical
reading of how El Salvador’s pandemic response conforms to and diverges from
different interpretations of biopolitics, including Mbembe’s work on necropolitics.
Finally, we discuss how El Salvador’s “biopolitical president” sheds light on some of
the more recent debates concerning pandemic management, including the legitimacy
of rights restrictions, the dangers to democracy posed by COVID-19 responses, and
the agency of average citizens who advocate and enforce health restrictions in align-
ment with (or in substitution for) the state.

Table 1. Selected states’ COVID-19 responses.67

Undermine Democratic Controls: Respect Democratic Controls:
Health-prioritizing: El Salvador, Hungary, Philippines Germany, South Korea, New Zealand
Health- Turkey, Mexico, Belarus, Turkmenistan UK (initially), Sweden, USA (under Trump), Brazil
minimizing:
4 J. T. HALLOCK AND C. T. CALL

Foucaultian debates and COVID-19

Biopolitics and biopower are contested terms, inspiring a wide range of analysis con-
cerning how various actors govern and politically administer biological life.9 Among
the most renowned – and debated – scholars of biopolitics is French philosopher
and historian Michel Foucault. While the concept of biopolitics predates Foucault’s
first use of the term in The History of Sexuality (1976), his work on biopolitics from
the mid-to-late 1970s serves as an integral referent point for scholars seeking to
“correct” or “complete” biopolitical analyses.10
In Foucault’s lecture Society Must Be Defended (1976), he advances an understand-
ing of biopower that takes life as both its object and objective.11 Biopower is one form
of power, but is a specific feature of the modern world, where power and knowledge
combine to foster order. Foucault details how the nature of power has evolved to
ensure the preservation of life as an important and legitimate role for state power
and necessary for economic production. In his later work, Foucault subsumed biopo-
litics into the broader analysis of security and governmentality. Foucault states,
[W]e need to see things not in terms of the replacement of a society of sovereignty by a dis-
ciplinary society and the subsequent replacement of a disciplinary society by a society of gov-
ernment; in reality one has a triangle, sovereignty-discipline-government, which has its
primary target the population and as its essential mechanism the apparatuses of security.12

Thomas Lemke argues this passage explains how technologies and rationalities of rule
are seldom homogenous, but rather reflect various combinations of power types.13 Bio-
power, on its own, is not sufficient to explain how power circulates and is exercised in
the modern state. However, certain political and historical contexts, such as plagues or
pandemics, can enhance the salience of biopolitics and biopower.

Disciplinary power and biopower

Foucault’s studies of disciplinary power and biopower depict devolution of the power
once located exclusively in the sovereign to various forms of power circulating
throughout society. Disciplinary power and biopower operate at different levels – dis-
cipline on the individual body and biopower on the population – yet both function as
mechanisms “designed to maximize and extract forces,” optimizing a “state of life” by
fostering equilibrium and regularity.14 In brief, these powers combine to generate
knowledge and create order.
In his seminal work Discipline and Punish (1975; English translation 1977), Fou-
cault describes the emergent modern state’s ability to elicit an orderly response from
its citizens, drawing on disciplinary power especially in times of crisis. State adminis-
trators dream of being able to harness such power and have the window to do so in
these historical junctures. Foucault writes,
The plague-stricken town, traversed throughout with hierarchy, surveillance, observation,
writing; the town immobilized by the functioning of an extensive power that bears in a distinct
way over all individual bodies—this is the utopia of the perfectly governed city. The plague
(envisaged as a possibility at least) is the trial in the course of which one may define ideally
the exercise of disciplinary power.15

Citizens’ disciplined adherence to state and other constraints on their liberty is con-
ditioned through a range of processes that normalize the individual, making possible
the evaluation and punishment of those who deviate from the norm. Reinforced by the
 DEMOCRATIZATION 5

production and refinement of knowledge, conditioning occurs in numerous social

institutions, such as schools, hospitals, and the military, with routinized behaviour
transposing into daily life. Individualization, paradoxically, creates “docile bodies”
that are homogenous, disciplined, and predictable. Normalizing an individual’s judg-
ments and decisions, combined with the omnipresent specter of surveillance, operates
as a form of invisible power over the body. Disciplinary power circulates through
society as an unseen ordering force, circumscribing a range of acceptable, and predict-
able, actions.
Foucault’s genealogy of disciplinary power maps how new technologies of power
emerge and gain preeminence in new political and historical contexts. Foucault
describes the shift from the sovereign’s visible, juridico-political power to a more
hidden, circulating power occurring in tandem with the development of modern capit-
alism, as sovereign power alone could not control and administer a society experien-
cing dramatic economic changes via industrialization and rapid population growth.16
The modern state’s first, and simpler, task to create order was implementing surveil-
lance and training of the individual body.
Foucault argues the more difficult task was to regulate society at the population
level. By the start of the eighteenth century, state centralization and coordination
ushered in the use of biopower through a focus on the political administration of
life. Biopolitics emerged with specific attention to the masses and a goal of regulariz-
ation, later described by Foucault as generating security.
One feature of the transition away from a power configuration predicated on sover-
eign rule is the conceptual shift from the sovereign’s right to “take life or let live” to the
“opposite right” of “making live and letting die.”17 Biopolitics, then, is the state’s
concern with understanding, controlling, and regularizing the population by entering
into policies affecting birth rate, death rate, minimizing accidents, creating insurance,
and altering humans’ interactions with nature – such as blunting the death rates caused
by disease. Furthermore, the mechanisms of biopolitics are different than those of dis-
ciplinary power, as biopolitics utilizes “forecasts, statistical estimates, and overall
measures.”18 Technical expertise is harnessed to monitor and generate knowledge
about the population, as life becomes both the object and objective of biopower.

Coronavirus and biopolitics

The implementation of policies designed to protect populations combine different
technologies of power. During the coronavirus pandemic, many states made life the
object of political administration by combining disciplinary measures and sovereign
power to safeguard the population.19 A state’s ability to reconfigure the power it exer-
cises becomes apparent in times of crisis. As Foucault notes, “Discipline was never
more important or more valorized than at the moment when it became important
to manage a population.”20
By mid-2020, the COVID-19 pandemic spurred two key conceptual approaches to
biopower and how it could operate across states and citizens. The first was a so-called
“biopolitics from above” that starts from the position that state power is exercised on
the population through twinning sovereign power and discipline to restrict movement,
enhance surveillance, and enact coercive punishment for deviating from practices
designed to protect the population. Giorgio Agamben represents one end of the spec-
trum, decrying state overreach. In February 2020, Agamben argued Italy’s state of
6 J. T. HALLOCK AND C. T. CALL

exception to halt the spread of the virus represented an incursion on citizen rights, a
reduction of citizens to bare, vulnerable life, and an abandonment of political and
social life.
Agamben clearly regards these perceived violations of human rights as excessive,
condemning collective panic and citizen legitimation of states of exception as giving
states undue power to eviscerate human freedom. Warning of how states of emergency
or exception can become extended and abused, he declares that a society in a perma-
nent state of exception is not a free society.21 In contrast to Foucault, Agamben argues
the biological body is a direct product of sovereign power. Biopower, for Agamben, is
not new or unique to the modern state, but rather has always existed in societal
relations where the state holds ultimate power over life.22
In contrast to biopolitics from above, a second conceptual approach sees global
responses to the virus with rather rose-tinted glasses. The so-called “biopolitics from
below” or “democratic biopolitics” involves a population making large-scale behav-
ioural changes for the benefit of the population’s health without a concurrent involun-
tary expansion of state surveillance or coercive power.23 Nick Pearce suggests informed
consent to unprecedented health measures could produce a “flowering of civic respon-
sibility and mutual aid.”24 Decisions to wear masks, social distance, and self-quarantine
absent the threat of punishment point to citizen-based collective action focused on the
protection and preservation of the population as a whole.
Democratic biopolitics offers citizens opportunities for agency. In this frame, citi-
zens are not simply reduced to biological life but make expressly political choices in
the way they conduct themselves. According to Pearce, when individuals consent to
monitoring regimens, such as choosing to utilize digital contact tracing applications
or to participate in testing studies, they are responsibly consenting to state disciplinary
power in ways that advance society by improving knowledge about the virus.25
Alternatively, Daniele Lorenzini’s COVID-19 analysis invites an historical
interpretation of biopower that questions current practices of governments, how
societies think about politics, and how citizens think about themselves.26 Lorenzini
focuses on the behaviour of docile populations, or “obedient political subjects,” both
during crises as well as during more normal times. For Lorenzini, the expansion of dis-
ciplinary and biological power is not necessarily good or bad, but it can be dangerous,
particularly when a docile population willingly submits to a state’s expansion of power.
Lorenzini favours addressing structural problems by crafting responses that reshape
social and political life to create resilience for the next crisis, rather than focusing
exclusively on solutions for immediate crises. Lorenzini’s analysis suggests it is necess-
ary to understand not only how power is exercised during a health crisis, but also how a
population willingly foregoes certain rights at the direction of a populist strongman.

El Salvador’s President Bukele: biopolitics par excellence?

Nayib Bukele was already a pathbreaking politician when he assumed the presidency in
June 2019. Constantly dressed casually in his leather jacket, no tie, and sometimes a
backward ballcap, Bukele was elected mayor of a small city at the age of thirty and
of San Salvador three years later. He embarked on a visible transformation of the
capital, enhancing public spaces and facilitating arrangements whereby the country’s
notorious gangs, MS-13 and Barrio 18, would reduce their violence.27 Before the pre-
sidential election he was thrown out of his party, the ruling Farabundo Martí National
 DEMOCRATIZATION 7

Liberation Front (FMLN), after his criticisms of the party’s inefficacy in delivering for
poor people gained traction among the public.28
Bukele ran as an outsider in one of the strongest two-party dominant systems in the
Americas. The right-wing National Republican Alliance (ARENA) had ruled from
1989-2009, negotiating an end to a twelve-year bloody civil war with the Marxist-Leni-
nist FMLN guerrilla army in 1992. The FMLN, the leftist political party that emerged
from the insurgency, eventually won the presidency and governed from 2009-19. From
1987 to April 2021, either ARENA or the FMLN, in alliance with smaller parties, also
dominated the National Assembly.
Bukele waged a twenty-first century populist campaign for president in 2019. He
excoriated the traditional elites as corrupt and inept, constantly tweeting and
posting on Facebook to win over young people, and refused to debate the candidates
of the traditional parties. Bukele found support in a population that was increasingly
skeptical of corrupt governance, the dominant political parties, and the ability of the
state to deliver economic improvements over decades. Bukele promised results to
people favouring pragmatism, not ideology.29 With 53% of the vote in the 2019 presi-
dential election, Bukele outperformed all other parties combined in a surprising first-
round victory, pronouncing the end of the two war-time parties’ political dominance.
By February 2021, the popularity of Bukele’s pandemic response translated into
another resounding electoral victory with his Nuevas Ideas party taking control of
the National Assembly, ushering in the end of the post-civil war era.
As COVID-19 became known in January 2020, President Bukele was among the
earliest leaders to publicly appreciate the seriousness of the threat and took sweeping
measures to protect and control the Salvadoran population. Perhaps reflecting a
desire to find favour with their powerful neighbour to the north, Guatemala’s recently
sworn-in President Alejandro Giammattei and President Bukele both announced
bans on foreigners entering from China hours after President Trump did so on
31 January.
What stands out is Bukele’s rapid series of measures in March that went beyond
most other countries. On 11 March, Bukele issued a decree declaring a state of emer-
gency, in which he became one of the first heads of government to bar all foreign
entry. The decree also established a 30-day quarantine for all Salvadorans entering
the country (longer than other countries),30 and a suspension of school classes for
three weeks. Although he withdrew the state of emergency the following day as
only the Assembly has the power to declare such a state, the other measures were
put into effect.
On 13 March, Bukele asked the Assembly to declare a state of exception, which
would suspend more constitutional rights than a state of emergency. The National
Assembly unanimously approved a state of emergency on 14 March, lasting for a
30-day period.31 Later on the same day, a split chamber approved Bukele’s request
for a more far-reaching state of exception for a 15-day period.32 Officially called the
“Law for the Temporary Restriction of Concrete Constitutional Rights to Address
the COVID-19 Pandemic,” the law restricted freedom of movement and enabled
forced relocation, but did not restrict freedoms of thought, association, expression,
and the press. Bukele insisted on a shutdown of the country, with only essential
workers able to leave their homes.33 By declaring a “red alert” for the virus, Bukele
placed the army in charge of enforcing the quarantine and coordinating logistics of
the quarantine centers.34
8 J. T. HALLOCK AND C. T. CALL

These measures, some of which were later undertaken by other governments,

conform to a vision of biopolitics intersecting with disciplinary power. In Foucault’s
telling of disease containment in seventeenth century France, “Each individual is con-
stantly located, examined and distributed among the living being, the sick, and the
dead.”35 Confining Salvadorans to their homes and quarantine centers, the latter
under the army’s supervision, reflects a disciplinary mechanism where the chaos of
the pandemic is met by order.
Bukele tweeted as each new case of COVID-19 emerged initially. Once numbers
reached a certain level, he began tweeting almost daily the tally of new cases, hospital-
izations, deaths, and location by province, even citing the number of beds available. On
3 May, for instance, he tweeted, “Today we have completed 1,791 COVID-19 tests (the
highest daily number yet). 1,726 negative, 65 positive,” and listed the cases by pro-
vince.36 For months Bukele tweeted out statistical estimates and measures of
COVID-19 in the country – the very mechanisms of Foucault’s biopolitics.
For those who opposed the extremity of the government’s measures, Bukele
asserted via Twitter on 8 May, “The only hope to avoid a health catastrophe in our
country is the special quarantine. The intentions of those who oppose it are clear:
they want to see cadavers tossed on the sidewalks and blame the government.
Perhaps they don’t see these are human lives?”37 As such, the President raises the
“specter of the plague” as an existential threat to the body politic, centreing himself
as the progenitor and executor of the only solution to quell the biological threat to Sal-
vadoran life – its saviour.
In contrast to populists who craft an “us-versus-them” narrative through cultural or
identity-based polarization, Bukele deftly used the mechanisms of biopolitics to pos-
ition himself as protector of the vast majority of Salvadorans. In doing so, he juxta-
posed his proactive, health-prioritizing discourse against the perceived failures of
the traditional political elites. His behaviour diverged from many other populists,
such as Trump or Bolsonaro, who actively downplayed COVID-19’s threat to public
health. Salvadorans placed their faith in and supported their president who vocifer-
ously declared he would fight to keep the population alive, even while exhibiting a will-
ingness to sacrifice their rights to do so.
Bukele also conforms to Foucault’s conception of biopolitics wherein states treat
some populations as subhuman – as not worthy of care and disposable to preserve
the healthy corpus of the people. Bukele made expendable those who were diagnosed
with COVID-19 and those suspected of exposure by virtue of violating his rules,
sending them to quarantine centers. Even more extreme, he publicized pictures of hun-
dreds of imprisoned members of MS-13 and Barrio 18 forced to sit intertwined in the
prison yard for an extended time – a clear violation of COVID-19 control and preven-
tion – as punishment for a spike in gang-related homicides in late April.38
Foucault’s notion of biopolitics offers a remarkably useful way of thinking about
power during the COVID-19 pandemic. In the case of El Salvador, we see the tech-
niques of power, regulation, and repression inherent in biopower. In a clear distillation
of Foucaultian biopolitics, Bukele broadcasts his efforts to both “make live” a vast
majority of the population as well as “let die” for a small minority. However, in
some of the most crucial contributions of Foucault’s theoretical notions, El Salvador
does not fully conform, and suggests new thinking about biopolitics. We now turn
to these patterns.
 DEMOCRATIZATION 9

Not so biopolitical after all?: sovereign power in weakly

institutionalized states
Even as the events of early and mid-2020 in El Salvador reflected many of the traits of
both biopolitics and disciplinary power as articulated by Michel Foucault, the empirics
of the country’s experience pose some challenges to Foucault’s project. It is important
to underscore that Foucault did not advance a clear statement of a causal or positivist
biopolitical theory that would lend itself to empirical testing. His project was post-
structuralist, critically reflecting on the relation of emergent biopolitics and disciplin-
ary power. His writings and lectures are sometimes contradictory and do not offer a
systematic, comprehensive vision of the concept.
Nevertheless, the case here offers contrasts to some key contributions of Foucault’s
concept of biopolitics. Foucault stressed the migration of power beyond the sovereign,
to other channels of power. Pandemic-ridden El Salvador offers a more conventional
instance of a sovereign exercising centralized decision-making power, albeit under the
guise of biopolitical considerations.
Much of Foucault’s work provides a Eurocentric framing of the state replete with
complex bureaucracies and well-developed social institutions. Disciplinary and bio-
power circulate through these various institutions, conceptualized as “capillaries”
of the modern state, indicating power is not centralized, but can be found operating
continuously on and through all people made subjects by various technologies of
power.
El Salvador has developed modern institutions to manage healthcare, education,
and governance, among other political and social sectors, but not all run autonomously
or condition the citizenry as Foucault’s theories presuppose. How do biopolitical and
disciplinary power operate in developing states with hollowed out or underdeveloped
bureaucracies and weak social institutions, namely schools, hospitals, and prisons that
do not efficiently generate and refine knowledge about the population?
Achille Mbembe critiques a Eurocentric definition of sovereignty that regards state
autonomy as built by “free and equal men and women” developing social norms and
constructing self-limiting institutions.39 Mbembe argues for a more “tactile” under-
standing of sovereignty as the right to kill – reminiscent of power in the ancien
régime – where life is subjected to the power of death, or what he calls necropolitics.
By identifying the shortcomings of an autonomous operation of biopower and locating
his analysis in colonial spaces rather than the idealized modern state, Mbembe argues
how in the “lawless” colony the sovereign right to kill or wage war is not bound by
“legal or institutional rules.”40 Mbembe notes colonial spaces are not relics of the
past but exist in the modern world where certain categories of people are subject to
different rules within the same space.
El Salvador does not perfectly match Mbembe’s description of the colony as a space
of “absolute lawlessness” where racial categories dehumanize segments of the popu-
lace.41 However, the Spanish colonial period casts a long shadow in El Salvador,
with the country’s political-economy and demographic composition influenced by
the legacy of plantation economics that stratified and made expendable certain seg-
ments of the population.42 In recent decades, the state has approved emergency
actions to combat violent gangs,43 and police officers have been accused of extrajudicial
force and executing gang members.44 Furthermore, El Salvador’s post-colonial period
– defined by a continuity of authoritarian rule45 and foreign influence – resembles
10 J. T. HALLOCK AND C. T. CALL

important aspects of necropolitics, namely how those in power decide “who is dispo-
sable and who is not.”46
El Salvador exhibits characteristics of both the modern state and the ancien régime,
where executives retain sovereign power. Despite modern institutions staffed with
experts capable of developing a pandemic response grounded in science, Bukele
broke down institutional guardrails to ensure he appeared in control of the crisis.
Former vice-minister of public health Eduardo Espinoza stated that “this government
has dismantled, defunded and changed the functions” of many of the preventive
capacities of the country’s health system.47 Espinoza suggested the government
cared mainly about projecting an image of competence even as it adopted policies
that undermined the COVID-19 response and diminished the state’s capacity to
detect and treat other diseases.
When stories in the international media questioned severity of his country’s pan-
demic response, Bukele turned it into a public relations opportunity to admonish
the press and El Salvador’s old guard politicians and extoll his administration’s
efforts to fight for citizens’ health.48 Bukele’s visible leadership as protector of the
people, constant public notifications on the status of the state’s health figures and
economy, and encouragement of harsh retribution for violations of temporary laws
appear less like Foucault’s invisible operation of modern power and more akin to a
ruler of a bygone era.
The pandemic offered Bukele an opportunity to challenge state institutions, but it
was not the first time he pushed the limits of his power. On 9 February 2020,
Bukele entered the Salvadoran legislature surrounded by armed soldiers in response
to the Assembly not moving to approve a $109 m loan to fund phase three of his “Ter-
ritorial Control Plan” to combat the country’s gangs. After domestic and international
condemnation of what was regarded as at least a violation of democratic norms and at
worst a failed self-coup,49 Bukele struck a familiar tone, arguing the media should not
focus on what he charitably described as his “attempts to protect the Salvadoran
people” but rather on Assembly members abetting violence against Salvadorans.50
Nayib Bukele’s political ambitions and executive actions complicate a Foucaultian
biopolitical analysis predicated on the autonomous operation of state power. Rather
than negating the value of biopolitics, Bukele’s actions and rhetoric focusing on the
population and security point back to Foucault’s understanding of the modern
state’s triangulation of various power types. Bukele shows that traditional top-down
exercise of power and authority is relevant for creating biopolitical policies, more per-
tinent in this case than agentless institutions, especially at moments of social crisis.
Biopower is seen not only in powerful states, but also in how this individual president
exercises control over the state and the populace. In this sense, President Bukele’s
administration sheds light on how biopolitics operates in historically familiar strong-
man patterns heretofore underemphasized or overlooked in weakly institutionalized
states.

El Salvador and key issues for post-COVID-19 biopolitical theorizing

Nayib Bukele’s extreme policies in both fighting a health crisis and in restricting rights
in the name of public health offer a rare chance to reflect on key debates about the
nature of biopolitics. His constraints on individual rights in the name of fighting
COVID-19 – more extreme than adopted in most countries – seem to slide neatly
 DEMOCRATIZATION 11

into an interpretation of biopolitics that views pandemics and plagues as opportunities

for accumulation of state power in ways that severely threaten individual rights and
advance authoritarian regimes.
Yet, many of Bukele’s policies enjoy extremely high popular support. Average Sal-
vadoran citizens help enforce the measures, and the president’s popularity remains
strong, with a November 2020 poll showing 90% support for Bukele’s pandemic
response.51
Certainly, some measures that constrain movement make sense from the perspec-
tive of protecting public health and welfare. However, state practices can also shift
from acceptable governance during a time of crisis to an entrenched exercise of
authoritarian tactics. Giorgio Agamben warns states use crises to perpetuate an
ever-expanding state of exception, making human life vulnerable to the power of
the state.
Bukele’s aggressive response to the coronavirus pandemic shows that Agamben’s
concerns have merit, though they should not be applied universally. Bukele’s approach
is exceptional among democratically elected leaders. Hungary’s Victor Orbán and the
Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte have demonstrated a similar willingness to expand power
through emergency decrees to fight COVID-19,52 but neither leader acted as swiftly or
earnestly as Bukele in defying democratic checks. Nor were their efforts to consolidate
power so intertwined with the rhetorical commitment to fighting COVID-19 and pro-
tecting the nation. Bukele’s response helps identify the threshold where emergency
health measures – ostensibly designed to protect the population – begin to encroach
on citizens’ civil and political rights. Below we examine when measures begin to rep-
resent excessive or unjustifiable incursions on freedom.

When is biopolitics authoritarian?

El Salvador’s experience with coronavirus suggests two useful markers to determine
when state policies signify the unreasonable exercise of power. One marker is the
extent to which there is a reasonable expectation that the repressive measure can
achieve a positive health result. El Salvador’s alleged manipulation of death totals,
the centralization and concealment of public data, and questions about the legitimacy
of testing numbers53 demonstrate a greater concern with the appearance of competent,
health-prioritizing administration to bolster political support rather than achieving
positive health results.54
The first marker to determine if administrative measures implemented by the state
are excessive is when there is no reasonable expectation those measures will help
combat the virus. In El Salvador, for instance, the president’s bluster was not
accompanied by the development of a national plan against the coronavirus, even as
he centralized decision-making.55
Even clearer evidence of a dangerous expansion of political power would be when
policies actually undercut the health of the populace. In El Salvador we have such evi-
dence, bolstering the concerns about biopower as a threat to liberty. Bukele proudly
tweeted his orders to detain anyone caught on the streets without an excuse, yet
first-hand accounts described the dragnet approach as producing “center[s] of con-
tamination” with substandard care and dirty, crowded conditions where uninfected
citizens intermixed with people who were COVID-19 positive.56 When Bukele’s
orders led to hundreds of imprisoned gang members, many without masks, sitting
12 J. T. HALLOCK AND C. T. CALL

between one another’s legs in human chains as punishment, the image was one of
humiliating tattooed young men, visibly risking their health rather than protecting it.
A second marker of whether the expanding power of the state should be viewed
with the alarm suggested by Agamben is the extent to which jurists affirm the consti-
tutionality of the policy.57 The El Salvador case also shows that independent courts are
vital as a check, perhaps the only check in a pandemic, on the unfettered power of a
head of government. Executive overreach becomes clear when the courts allege usur-
pation of powers typically reserved for the legislative branch.
The Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court ruled in March and April 2020
that Bukele’s executive directives to detain people at so-called “quarantine centers” for
not complying with stay-at-home orders were illegal as they circumvented the legisla-
tive branch and violated citizens’ constitutional rights.58 Despite the Constitutional
Chamber annulling Bukele’s executive orders and pushing back against the expansion
of executive power, the president remained persistent, ensuring that police continued
to detain violators of the quarantine for 30 days, tweeting “NO resolution is above the
Salvadoran people’s constitutional right to life and health. . . five people [the Consti-
tutional Chamber justices] will not decide the deaths of hundreds of thousands of
people.”59 His paternalistic declaration gave primacy to the health of the social body
and the preservation of biological life – not the health of democracy, state constitution-
ality, or institutional stability.
On 8 June 2020, the Constitutional Chamber released a 90-page report stating 11 of
Bukele’s executive decrees designed to combat COVID-19 were unconstitutional, pri-
marily for usurping legislative powers and violating citizens’ fundamental rights.60
Immediately following the release of the 8 June report, Bukele baselessly claimed the
“[Constitutional Chamber] has just ordered us to assassinate tens of thousands of Sal-
vadorans within 5 days.”61
The Constitutional Chamber’s rulings provide a marker for determining executive
overreach and undue health measures, while Bukele cloaks himself in performative
populism designed to gain political benefit through the appearance of competent
administration. Bukele’s blatant disregard for the various rulings demonstrates the
erosion of the democratic check offered by an independent judiciary. Unlike
perhaps any other head of state in the world, Bukele seems to exult in his role as power-
ful protector, whose authority and rectitude during the crisis should not be questioned.
Here we see how the pandemic becomes an opportunity for power to expand and be
exercised in ways that penetrate society and cow all opposition.

Citizen conformity: Em(bio)powered agents or disem(bio)powered subjects?

Finally, the COVID-19 pandemic offers the chance to explore the complicated issue of
popular agency and consent in relation to state actions that curb rights and freedoms.
Nick Pearce argues that biopolitical policies can be liberating, if carried out with “active
consent,” where citizens drive limitations on their own freedoms, rendering restric-
tions appropriate and morally defensible.62
Democratic biopolitics starts with the assumption citizens retain political agency.
Yet, following Foucault, Danielle Lorenzini’s analysis points to first examining how
societies are already docile, composed of “subjects” of power. Lorenzini notes the sig-
nificant extent to which people have self-policed during the COVID-19 pandemic. In
his view, pandemics simply make visible an already obedient population.63 Power
 DEMOCRATIZATION 13

curtails freedoms when people willingly submit, calling into question citizens’ “active
consent” as a marker for the appropriateness of biopolitical policies.
The Salvadoran case shows vividly how average citizens can embrace and even
advocate restrictions on their own freedoms. However, as seen earlier, the health
logic of Bukele’s policies to protect lives are not always clear, and sometimes would
negatively affect the populations he seeks to preserve. Reports from summer 2020 indi-
cated many Salvadorans were starving, flying white flags outside homes to indicate
their desperation and need for support.64 A study interviewing 1,600 people in El Sal-
vador’s two largest urban centers in June and July 2020 found more than 50% of
respondents did not receive government cash assistance, that 60% had skipped a
meal every day the week prior to save money, and that many had to forego or interrupt
healthcare.65
Bukele’s COVID-19 policies included some programmes that safeguarded public
health, but they also included numerous measures that abused, demeaned, and humi-
liated certain citizens in ways that only make sense as a demonstration of power. In an
overtly literal rendering of biopower, Bukele is both making live and letting die, but in
ways that clearly benefit him politically. Given the repressive nature and the degree to
which some of El Salvador’s COVID-19 policies do not reasonably advance public
health, it is legitimate to inquire whether this behaviour represents a docility among
Salvadorans who are overly swayed by a performative populist.
Bukele demonstrates a nuanced expression of populism that is broadly inclusive of
the Salvadoran populace, defining narrow groupings, such as gangs and the traditional
political elite, as existential threats to the body politic. The vast majority of the popu-
lation is not being set against itself, but rather against the old order. Bukele’s perfor-
mative tactics allow him to garner credit for delivering health, vaccines, and food to
the population. Denigrating the old order helped in his focus on securing a legislative
majority. Accordingly, Bukele is welcomed by a population loathe to return to a recent
history plagued by maladministration and violence.
The country’s February 2021 legislative elections provided a clear referendum in
favour of Bukele’s leadership, as his Nuevas Ideas party won 66% of the vote, going
from zero representation in the National Assembly to winning a supermajority with
56 of 84 seats. ARENA came in second with 14 seats while the FMLN only garnered
4 seats. On 1 May 2021, the first day of the new legislative session, Bukele’s allies in
the National Assembly removed the five Constitutional Chamber judges who tried
to check the president the previous year, as well as Attorney General Raúl Melara,
who had reportedly opened criminal investigations into Bukele administration
officials concerning pandemic-related spending. Despite international outcry that
these actions violated the law, Bukele pointed to a constitutional provision allowing
a supermajority in the legislature to remove and appoint officials to certain positions.
Importantly, no widespread citizen action or protests followed the stunningly swift
capture of the judicial branch by Bukele and his party.
It is unclear that the masses supportive of Bukele’s policies, which violate demo-
cratic norms and marginalize some categories of people, conform to the notion of a
“bottom-up, democratic” biopolitics. The case suggests that it may be naïve or over-
simplified to use the active consent of a willing population to serve as an indicator
for a policy’s appropriateness. El Salvador suggests that the issue of active consent
requires some careful theorizing and cautious conclusions.
14 J. T. HALLOCK AND C. T. CALL

Conclusion
COVID-19 offers an opportunity to empirically evaluate state power by analysing
responses to the pandemic. Countries took divergent paths in early 2020, some prior-
itizing public health while respecting democratic norms, as others both downplayed
the threat of the virus and trampled citizen rights. Some offered muddled responses,
with leaders sending mixed messages and delayed support, in some instances requiring
citizens to take the initiative to safeguard public health. Unique among state responses
to COVID-19 was that of El Salvador, the small Central American state led by idiosyn-
cratic, millennial president Nayib Bukele. His combination of public health-prioritiz-
ing rhetoric and democratic control defying actions yields valuable insights into both
state power and biopolitics.
Michel Foucault succinctly explained the goal and mechanisms of biopower in his
lecture Society Must Be Defended, but left open to interpretation crucial aspects of the
concept, such as how biopolitics should be evaluated empirically or how widely appli-
cable the term was for weakly institutionalized states. The COVID-19 policies set forth
by the Salvadoran state, ostensibly, meet the goal of biopolitics – extracting forces and
generating order – through close attention to the mechanisms of biopolitics – forecasts,
statistical estimates, and overall measures of the coronavirus’ impact on society. Bukele
appears to be the biopolitical politician par excellence with his overt attention to acting
as saviour to protect and “make live” a large portion of the population while also
showing disdain for the small part of the population he deems a threat to the viability
of the populations’ overall health.
However, in important ways, the case suggests the need for refining aspects of Fou-
cault’s biopolitical analysis. Foucault’s notion of biopower is distinctive largely because
it shows how power operates through multiple channels of often autonomous insti-
tutions and practices. In this view, power’s influence does not emanate explicitly
from directives or state decisions, but from routines and state or social bureaucracies.
However, in El Salvador in 2020, people’s behaviour was shaped in ways that reflect
more traditional actions by a sovereign head of state. In contrast to a conception of
sovereignty as citizens’ retention of individual autonomy, Bukele retains what
Mbembe describes as the “ultimate expression of sovereignty” in his power to
dictate who lives and who dies.66 The nakedness of Bukele’s central, executive
power is striking, reminiscent of the rule of kings.
In the vein of Danielle Lorenzini, we have attempted to avoid a notion of biopolitics
that would reduce the concept to a type of power to either support or oppose. Instead,
we have approached biopolitics as a power that can manifest in a variety of policy
responses, combine with other types of power to extract forces and generate order,
and be dangerous or abused in specific contexts. Using Foucault’s biopolitics as a start-
ing point, we have examined various debates surrounding states’ COVID-19 responses
and empirically tested how the concept conforms to and deviates from theory.
El Salvador represents a unique case where citizens appear to have rewarded their
head of state for defying democratic checks on his power to implement proactive and
restrictive health measures that, at times, provided no clear public health benefits. Citi-
zens supported the president’s messages that combined the zealous fight for the health
of the people with derision of the old order’s inability to provide security, health, or
services. The Salvadoran case shows how an effective response may be inhibited not
due to questions of capacity, but because of power dynamics and the privileging of
 DEMOCRATIZATION 15

political aims. Bukele demonstrated singular political savvy in harnessing the mechan-
isms of biopolitics during the COVID-19 pandemic to consolidate power. His per-
formance as a competent leader won the support of Salvadorans, translated into
electoral victories, and cleared a legal pathway to further limit the democratic
checks on his power.

Notes
1. Foucault, Society Must Be Defended.
2. Edgell et al., “Pandemic Backsliding.”
3. El Salvador is only one of 15 countries to reach the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response
Tracker’s highest level of government restriction for COVID-19 related policies. See, Hale
et al., “A Global Panel Database of Pandemic Policies.”
4. Gavarrete and Oliva, “El monopolio de datos que deja al personal de salud con una estrategia a
ciegas.”
5. Repucci and Slipowitz, “Democracy under Lockdown: The Impact of COVID-19 on the Global
Struggle for Freedom.”
6. Agamben, “L’invenzione di un’epidemia.”
7. Mbembe, “Necropolitics,” 23–25.
8. Ding, “Performative Governance.”
9. Campbell and Sitze, Biopolitics; Lemke, Biopolitics.
10. see Esposito, Bíos; Collier, “Topologies of Power.”
11. Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 253.
12. Foucault, “Governmentality,” 102.
13. Lemke, “Foucault, Politics and Failure,” 41.
14. Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 246.
15. Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 198.
16. Foucault, Discipline and Punish; Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 250.
17. Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 241.
18. Ibid., 246.
19. Hannah, “Thinking Corona Measures with Foucault.”
20. Foucault, “Governmentality,” 102.
21. Agamben, “L’invenzione di un’epidemia.”
22. Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life.
23. Sotiris, “Against Agamben.”
24. Pearce, “After the Lockdown.”
25. Pearce.
26. Lorenzini, “Biopolitics in the Time of Coronavirus.”
27. Martínez, “Nayib Bukele También Pactó Con Pandillas.”
28. Valencia, Arauz, and Martínez, “Nayib Bukele.”
29. Montoya, “The Election of Nayib Bukele in El Salvador Shows How Wartime Polarities Have
Dissolved into Pragmatism”; see also García, “Profile.”
30. Children, pregnant women and people over sixty years of age would be tested and allowed to
leave quarantine before the 30 days if testing negative.
31. Dictamen 29 concerning the State of Emergency passed the Salvadoran Assembly on March 14,
2020 with 84 votes in favor.
32. Dictamen 30 concerning the Regime of Exception passed the Salvadoran Assembly on March
14, 2020 with 58 votes in favor and 25 votes in opposition.
33. La Prensa Gráfica, “Las noticias más importantes del viernes 13 de marzo.”
34. Voz de América, “El Salvador declara el estado de emergencia para enfrentar COVID-19.”
35. Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 197.
36. Bukele, May 3, 2020.
37. Bukele, May 8, 2020.
38. González Díaz, “Las impactantes imágenes con las que El Salvador anunció que juntó a presos
de diferentes pandillas en las celdas para combatir la violencia (y qué riesgos conlleva).”
39. Mbembe, “Necropolitics,” 13.
16 J. T. HALLOCK AND C. T. CALL

40. Mbembe, 25.

41. Mbembe, 24.
42. López Bernal, “Las claves de la historia de El Salvador.”
43. see Wolf, Mano Dura, 49–73.
44. “Informe de Derechos Humanos 2019,” 13.
45. Ching, Authoritarian El Salvador.
46. Mbembe, “Necropolitics,” 27.
47. Evelia, “Desorden en Salud puede ocasionar rebrote de otras enfermedades”; see also Argueta,
“El tratamiento socio-estatal de la crisis sanitaria con perspectiva generacional.”
48. Bukele, “¿Dictadura de Qué?”
49. Wade, “Bukele’s Politicization of the Military Revives Old Fears in El Salvador.”
50. Bukele, “‘El Salvador Will Fight Corruption, Violence for the Good of Its Citizens.’”
51. Arrieta, “Nayib Bukele es el presidente que mejor manejó la emergencia del Covid-19, Carlos
Alvarado en séptimo lugar.”
52. Diamond, “Democracy Versus the Pandemic.”
53. Rauda, “Salud Confirma Más de 600 Entierros Con Protocolo Covid-19”; Gavarrete and Oliva,
“El monopolio de datos que deja al personal de salud con una estrategia a ciegas”; Valeria and
Gavarrete, “Dijeron que mi esposo había muerto, pero no de qué”; Machuca, “¿A quiénes les
hacen las 2,500 pruebas covid diarias?”; Calderon, “La realidad es más catastrófica que las cifras
oficiales de covid-19 en El Salvador, dice presidente del Colegio Médico.”
54. Based on one composite health metric, El Salvador is roughly average in their response. The
excessive measures did not yield exceptional health-based results. See Leng and Lemaheiu,
“Covid Performance Index.”
55. Remarks of Noah Bullock, director of Cristosal, to authors, July 2020.
56. Dada, “Life and Death in a Government Quarantine Facility in El Salvador.”
57. This criterion becomes problematic if the judicial branch has been bought, corrupted, politi-
cally appointed or beholden to the executive. This point is of particular relevance after the dis-
missal of all five Constitutional Chamber judges on May, 1, 2021.
58. Human Rights Watch, “El Salvador.”
59. Bukele, April 15, 2020.
60. “Inconstitucionalidad.”
61. Bukele, June 9, 2020.
62. Pearce, “After the Lockdown.”
63. Lorenzini, “Biopolitics in the Time of Coronavirus.”
64. Dada, “The White Flag of Hunger.”
65. Lagarde, Sánchez Masferrer, and Riumallo Herl, “El Salvador’s COVID-19 Response Is Storing
up Health and Economic Problems for the Worse-Off”
66. Mbembe, “Necropolitics.”
67. Authors developed this table consulting Hale et. al, Edgell et. al, and Repucci and Slipowitz.

Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Erin Collins, David Holiday, Jonathan Fox, and two anonymous
reviewers for their thoughtful comments and feedback on earlier versions of this paper.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributors
Jeffrey T. Hallock is a doctoral candidate studying International Relations at American University.
Charles T. Call is an associate professor of International Peace and Conflict Resolution at American
University, focusing on post-war peacebuilding, statebuilding, democratization, human rights and
police and justice reform.
 DEMOCRATIZATION 17

ORCID
Jeffrey T. Hallock http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5718-4096
Charles T. Call http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6930-9220

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