3.1. Securitization theory

At the heart of the securitization process is the idea that it is by referring to certain issues as ‘security’ issues that they become security threats (Buzan et al., Reference Buzan, Wæver, Wæver and De Wilde1998). By putting the nature and essence of security into question, the securitization theory, as originally formulated by the Copenhagen School led by Buzan et al., (Reference Buzan, Wæver, Wæver and De Wilde1998), has deepened and broadened the subject and scope of security to include non-military issues and non-state referent objects that need to be protected. Labelling the COVID-19 pandemic as a human security threat, for example, catapults the pandemic into the realm of high-priority issues that demand urgent ‘extraordinary measures’ such as the state-led vaccination programmes implemented along with lockdown restrictions, social distancing measures, and mask and testing requirements, among others. Together, they demonstrate the logic and impact of urgency and exceptionality. Had the COVID-19 pandemic not been framed as a security threat that demands the interruption of ordinary politics, such measures would probably have neither emerged nor remained in place to this day. In the words of Ole Wæver (Reference Wæver and Lipschutz1995), ‘the utterance itself is the act … by saying it, something is done’.

This suggests that many of the issues that we treat and accept as security issues are not natural facts but are constructed through language since it is only by uttering or referring to them that they come into being. Specifically, they need to be articulated as ‘dangerous’, ‘menacing’, or ‘alarming’ security problems by the securitizing actors (e.g., political leaders and elites) who have the social and institutional capacity to move those issues ‘beyond politics’ (Eroukhmanoff Reference Eroukhmanoff2018: 1; see also, Buzan et al., Reference Buzan, Wæver, Wæver and De Wilde1998). These ‘speech acts’ or the acts in which the securitizing actors frame the issues as security issues that need to be shifted beyond politics are at the core of all securitization processes. To quote securitization theory’s principal architects, delivering this securitizing speech act is ‘like betting, giving a promise, naming a ship’ (Buzan et al., Reference Buzan, Wæver, Wæver and De Wilde1998: 26). As such, they can be considered as a form of world-making in the sense that they simultaneously describe and constitute the security ‘realities’ that activate particular courses of action (Guzzini Reference Guzzini2011; Wilhelmsen Reference Wilhelmsen2017). While describing the reality that we see, as Erika Eroukhmanoff (Reference Eroukhmanoff2018: 2) surmised, ‘we also interact with that world and perform an action that will greatly contribute to seeing that reality in a different way’.

Convincing the target audience (e.g., the public) to accept a securitizing speech act and its accompanying extraordinary measures requires an investment of significant attention to this issue. The securitizing actors often fulfil this by amplifying the issue’s level of urgency by elevating the issue beyond the confines of ordinary democratic politics to justify the creation and implementation of the ‘only’ viable solutions to the problem in the form of extraordinary measures. Accordingly, the securitizing actors are able to portray some responses as more rational and sensible than others while also allowing them to establish certain ‘truths’ about the nature of both the issue and referent object in question (Eroukhmanoff Reference Eroukhmanoff2018; see also Balzacq et al., Reference Balzacq, Léonard and Ruzicka2016; Taureck Reference Taureck2006; Stritzel Reference Stritzel2014). An issue is said to have been securitized when an audience reaches a consensus about the nature of the threat, compelling its members to support the implementation of the extraordinary measures proposed by the securitizing actors which would have been deemed undemocratic under normal circumstances. Conversely, the audience’s rejection of the securitizing actors’ speech act suggests that the securitization process has failed and, as such, should only be regarded as a securitizing move (see Balzacq et al., Reference Balzacq, Léonard and Ruzicka2016, Floyd Reference Floyd2016; Ruzicka Reference Ruzicka2019).

A successful securitization designates security as an exceptional realm, affording the securitizing actors the authority to decide when to suspend normal politics and the power to control the public (Eroukhmanoff Reference Eroukhmanoff2018). The word ‘successful’ here does not necessarily pertain to a situation in which securitization accomplishes the securitizing actor’s stated aim or purpose by successfully averting the threat in question, but, to echo Rita Floyd (Reference Floyd2016: 677–8), it ‘captures the Copenhagen School’s assertion that only when securitization takes a specific form and consists of “existential threats, emergency action, and effects on interunit relations by breaking free of rules” can we recognize it as distinct from politicization’ (see also, Buzan et al., Reference Buzan, Wæver, Wæver and De Wilde1998: 26; Wæver Reference Wæver2011).

Note, however, that securitization is an inherently intersubjective process involving active audiences, the traditional securitization theory, as Adam Côté (Reference Côté2016: 543) posits, marginalizes its intersubjective nature by characterizing the audiences as ‘agents without agency’. As other securitization scholars have already pointed out, the treatment of the audience within the said theory has either been inconsistent or non-existent (Côté Reference Côté2016; see also, Léonard and Kaunert Reference Léonard and Kaunert2010; Salter Reference Salter2008; Vaughn Reference Vaughn2009; Williams Reference Williams2011) with many criticizing the lack of clarity and accuracy of the term as defined by the Copenhagen School (e.g., Balzacq Reference Balzacq2005; Cavelty Reference Dunn Cavelty2008; McDonald Reference McDonald2008; Stritzel Reference Stritzel2007). Although this might be justified by arguing that the ‘relevant audience’ is always case-specific, ‘the omission of detailed criteria for recognizing and delimiting the audience’, as Jocelyn Vaughn (Reference Vaughn2009: 273) asserts, weakens the utility of the securitization framework in empirical research by deterring analysts from confidently identifying ‘which audience has to accept what argument, to what degree, and for how long’ (Cavelty Reference Dunn Cavelty2008: 26; see also, Léonard and Kaunert Reference Léonard and Kaunert2010). By leaving the actual politics underpinning the acceptance of emergency measures proposed by the securitizing actors ‘radically under-determined’ (Salter Reference Salter2008: 324; see also, Côté Reference Côté2016: 542), the audience in the securitization story has also remained ‘radically underdeveloped’ (Williams cited in Côté Reference Côté2016: 542).

This problem is exacerbated by the views of other experts who suggest that as far as the traditional securitization theory is concerned, the audience should be viewed more as a normative rather than an analytical concept and, therefore, can either be ignored or negated (Balzacq Reference Balzacq2005; Floyd Reference Floyd2010; see also, Côté Reference Côté2016). These versions omit the stage in the securitization theory in which the audiences decide whether to accept or reject the proposed extraordinary measures, focusing instead on the security actions precipitated by the speech acts, such as the concrete policy or behavioural changes on the part of the relevant agents (Côté Reference Côté2016; see also Floyd Reference Floyd2016; Salter and Piché Reference Salter and Piché2011). As an intersubjective process, we take the view that the language of the speech is not merely a self-referential activity but to quote Matt McDonald (Reference McDonald2008: 566) just ‘one component of the intersubjective construction of security’ and, as such, opens the door for greater consideration of social interaction and authorization vis-à-vis the ‘processes of constructing a shared understanding of what is to be considered and collectively responded to as a threat’ (Buzan, Wæver and de Wilde Reference Buzan, Wæver, Wæver and De Wilde1998: 26), as well as the creation of shared security values (see Côté Reference Côté2016: 542).

Given the pivotal role of the audiences in this context, specifically, the British and Thai public, we adopt Côté’s (Reference Côté2016: 552–4) reinterpretation of the securitization theory as ‘a deliberative, iterative process between’ securitizing actors and active audiences that allows both parties to contribute to ‘the construction of shared security meanings and legitimized outcomes’. Thus, ideally, we view the audiences as actively engaged participants that respond in a variety of ways and with varying consequences with respect to the whole securitization process and its individual components, that is, the securitizing actors, the speech acts, and the emergency measures. This results in what Côté (Reference Côté2016: 546) describes as ‘repeated, contextually situated interactions’ between the securitizing actors and audiences, and which, in turn, lead to ‘multiple securitizing moves and audience responses regarding a single issue over time’. The purpose of which is to ultimately secure audience acceptance (Côté Reference Côté2016; see also, Bright Reference Bright2012; Hughes Reference Hughes2007; Roe Reference Roe2008). These assertions about the audience’s role in the securitization process underscore the importance of recognizing the context under which the audiences operate. As Côté (Reference Côté2016: 546) puts it further, ‘any definition of audience identity requires confronting the audience’s contextualized nature while, at the same time, delineating its universal legitimizing character’.

And within the context of this extreme pandemic, we argue that the British and Thai states attempted to take full control over the framing of COVID-19 as the primary existential security threat. Such monopolistic efforts on the part of elite state actors significantly undermined the capacity of other non-state entities to participate in and contribute to this inherently intersubjective process, particularly during the early stages of the pandemic. We outline three propositions explaining how the process unfolded and its outcomes:

These three propositions lead to the question of the extent of this functional similarity between these two ontologically opposed states. Edgell et al.’s (Reference Edgell, Lachapelle, Lührmann and Maerz2021) democratic standards for emergency measures framework is useful in examining the general extent to which the different regimes represented by these two countries become functionally similar in the COVID-19 context.

3.2. Democratic standards for emergency measures framework

Drawing on the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and its interpretation by human rights scholars and experts, Edgell et al’s (Reference Edgell, Lachapelle, Lührmann and Maerz2021) framework for assessing violations of democratic standards when implementing emergency actions is specifically designed to capture state responses and behaviours during emergencies such as pandemics. Its primary function is to provide a mechanism for assessing whether the limitations imposed on human rights during emergencies such as the COVID-19 pandemic adhere to international norms. Put differently, instead of assessing the qualities that make a regime democratic or autocratic, the framework evaluates the general extent to which government practices digress from standard democratic norms in crisis contexts.

In doing so, the authors adopt a conservative approach when determining whether a specific restriction constitutes a violation by defining violations of democratic standards for emergency measures as restrictions that ‘occur in an unambiguously disproportionate, non-necessary, or discriminatory way’ (Edgell et al., Reference Edgell, Lachapelle, Lührmann and Maerz2021: 3). Accordingly, limitations curtailing free movement and assembly rights such as lockdowns and school or workplace shutdowns become violations only when these measures prove to be ‘indefinite, disproportionate, discriminatory, or abusively enforced’, whereas election cancellations are not automatically considered as violations given the uncertainties over how these activities could be safely facilitated during a pandemic (Edgell et al., Reference Edgell, Lachapelle, Lührmann and Maerz2021: 3).

The framework has three main categories: (1) illiberal practices constituting violations that ‘infringe on personal autonomy and dignity’; (2) authoritarian practices constituting violations that ‘sabotage accountability by disabling access to information and voice’; (3) ‘intersectional’ practices constituting violations that ‘simultaneously undermine accountability and infringe on personal autonomy and dignity’, specifically, the restrictions on media freedoms (Edgell et al., Reference Edgell, Lachapelle, Lührmann and Maerz2021: 3). Table 2 above summarizes the framework’s three categories and the individual types of violations comprising each. Rather than being mutually exclusive, these different violation types under each category are all interconnected.

Table 2.

The categories and types of democratic standards violations for emergency measures framework. Source: Edgell et al., Reference Edgell, Lachapelle, Lührmann and Maerz2021. Note: The term ‘intersectional practices’ was from the authors’ own interpretation of these practices described by Edgell et al., (Reference Edgell, Lachapelle, Lührmann and Maerz2021)

Based on the statistical analyses conducted by the authors using a large-N dataset covering 144 countries, the seven violations listed do not strongly correlate with each other. This indicates that the governments included in the sample employed a variety and diverse set of illiberal and authoritarian practices during COVID-19. The low-correlation result of the Kaiser, Meyer, and Olkin (KMO) test performed by Edgell et al (Reference Edgell, Lachapelle, Lührmann and Maerz2021) also suggested heterogeneity in states’ practices which, in turn, provided empirical support for this seven-fold conceptualization of violation. Two main findings are relevant to the current study: (1) that several democracies engaged in different types of violation but with a high degree of heterogeneity vis-à-vis the extent and form of these violations; and (2) that due to the lack of systematic correlation between the severity of violations and reported COVID-19 deaths meant that claims suggesting that life must be prioritized over democracy or democratic standards must be violated to protect the people the virus must be vigilantly challenged (Edgell et al., Reference Edgell, Lachapelle, Lührmann and Maerz2021).

Applying this practice-based framework in combination with the securitization theory, we probe how the securitization politics performed by the British and Thai states directed and influenced the COVID-19 policy strategies they adopted. Assessing the general extent to which these two ontologically distinct regimes utilized and pursued emergency security responses that constituted violations of democratic standards, we demonstrate how and why democratic and authoritarian states can become functionally similar when faced with the pandemic’s existential threat. While it may not be particularly surprising that the security responses of the UK and Thailand would look similar considering the ‘authoritarian’ orientation through which security politics is often conceived within the securitization literature, our comparative probing of monopolistic securitization in both countries demonstrates the approach’s crucial role in qualitatively rethinking/renegotiating the constitutive features of democracy and authoritarianism as understood/practiced in the UK and Thailand, respectively. Given the distinctive politico-institutional identities and socio-ideological cultures differentiating the two countries, securitization’s inherent intersubjective nature and the deliberative-iterative mechanism underpinning this process, can be expected to produce qualitatively different forms of securitization (e.g., within the ‘democratic-authoritarian’ continuum) and different outcomes (e.g., Fisher and Anderson Reference Fisher and Anderson2015; Galbreath Reference Galbreath2012; Hayes Reference Hayes2012; Tickner Reference Tickner2015; Yilmaz et al., Reference Yilmaz, Shipoli and Demir2021, Reference Yilmaz, Shipoli and Demir2023).

On the one hand, owing to its supposedly robust democracy, conventional wisdom would expect the UK government and the public to engage in a productive two-way dialogue as COVID-19 gets to be framed as a primary existential threat alongside the emergency actions presented to be critical to addressing it right off the bat.Footnote ¹ However, amid the pandemic’s extreme severity and impact, the initial securitizing moves launched by the British state resembled those of the Thai state by constraining the intersubjective process required to socially construct the pandemic as a primary existential security, thus leaving marginal consideration for audience consent. On the other, considering its authoritarian features, one could expect the absence of any meaningful consultation between the Thai government and the public with regard to how COVID-19 should be framed as an existential security threat or whatever necessary emergency policy must be imposed to address it.Footnote ² Nevertheless, over time, the Thai public, like its British counterpart, was able to contest and alter the emergency measures implemented on their behalf owing to the fundamental deliberative-iterative mechanism underpinning securitization.

Put differently, monopolistic securitization should have been relatively difficult to pull off in the UK given its democratic institutions and ideals designed to ensure checks and balances. Yet, like their Thai counterparts, the British authorities were able to initially bypass the intersubjective process necessary for socially constructing COVID-19 as a primary existential threat and disregard audience consent amid the pandemic’s extreme severity and impact. Conversely, monopolistic securitization should have been relatively straightforward in Thailand considering its authoritarian norms and infrastructures designed to curtail and deflect public interference. Yet, like their British counterparts, the Thai authorities faced relentless and fierce resistance from public that continued to intensify as the pandemic progressed. These intertwining dynamics and conditions sustaining and emanating from the politics of monopolistic securitization underscore how and why pandemics like COVID-19 can make ontologically distinct states functionally similar by stimulating security responses characterized by similar types of democratic violations within the illiberal-authoritarian spectrum, albeit at differing magnitudes and scales.

4.1. Constraining the initial intersubjective process required to socially construct COVID-19 as a primary existential threat (proposition 1): ‘democratic’ versus ‘authoritarian’ speech acts

These were the words uttered by Thailand’s Prime Minister General Prayut Chan-o-cha on 23 December 2020 amid the warnings raised by the country’s Centre for COVID-19 Situation Administration (CCSA) tasked to manage and control the pandemic (Newport Reference Newport2020). The Centre’s warning underscored the severity of the COVID-19 threat as perceived by Thai leaders after the country became the first officially report a COVID-19 case outside of China in January 2020 (WHO 2020). The statement was in stark contrast to the previous stance adopted by the authorities when they called on the people to trust the Thai health system. During the pandemic’s earlier phases, Thai officials responded by implementing a combination of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs), including COVID-19 screening protocol, contact tracing, quarantine measures, and self-assessment, along with strict lockdown measures over extended periods. But as the number of COVID-19-related deaths began to pile up, it became increasingly clear to the public that the state was simply ill-equipped to deal with the crisis. Amid the growing hostile political climate, critics began to question Chan-o-cha’s policy choices whom they suspected of concocting tools for heightened political suppression masked as public health measures (Suriyachotichayangkul Reference Suriyachotichayangkul2020).

The initial public backlash did not prevent the Ministry of Public Health (MOPH) from announcing the inclusion of COVID-19 under the 2015 Communicable Disease Act, following the World Health Organization’s (WHO) declaration of the viral infection as a pandemic (WHO 2020). The Thai prime minister doubled down on his position when the state declared an emergency decree on 15 October 2020 which was supposed to facilitate a more centralized response to the pandemic alongside key public health authorities (Bunnag Reference Bunnag2022). The state justified the decree’s implementation by highlighting the inability of the existing Communicable Disease Act to control the people’s movements within and outside of Thailand while waiting for COVID-19 vaccines to be invented. As CCSA’s Taweesilp Visanuyothin pointed out, the measure allowed the state to take swift and decisive actions such as putting in place quarantine and tracking measures necessary for containing the COVID-19 virus. Since its imposition, the emergency decree was renewed nineteen times and was only terminated on 1 October 2022.

Meanwhile, watching from afar as COVID-19 swept East Asia at the start of 2020, the UK’s then-prime minister, Boris Johnson, addressed the nation on the country’s COVID-19 situation on 23 March 2020:

During the pandemic’s early phase, the British authorities were convinced that their initial ‘four-pronged plan’ to contain, delay, research, and mitigate was enough to fight what would have turned out to be one of the worst pandemics in modern history. The country’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) downplayed the WHO’s earlier warnings and rejected the lockdown measures already implemented in Italy, Spain, and France as COVID-19 began to plague Europe (Abbasi Reference Abbasi2020). But as the death toll continued to rise, the parliament finally passed the Coronavirus Act on 25 March 2020, granting it the emergency powers to adopt emergency measures to contain COVID-19. Similar to the Thai state’s initial policy measures, these were mainly NPIs designed to ‘slow [the] rate of transmission of a virus, the incidence and prevalence of cases, and resultant hospitalizations and deaths’ (Tatlow et al., Reference Tatlow, Cameron-Blake, Grewal, Hale, Phillips and Wood2020: 2). The idea was to ‘flatten the curve’ by reducing the burden on the National Health Service (NHS) and preventing resources from being completely depleted (Tatlow et al., Reference Tatlow, Cameron-Blake, Grewal, Hale, Phillips and Wood2020).

In the absence of a vaccine, the UK government and its advisers struggled to justify the implementation of what was then seen as ‘eye-catching measures’ which included the banning of mass gatherings and school closures (Grey and Macaskill Reference Grey and MacAskill2020). The misguided view by some SAGE experts that most COVID-19 cases would be relatively mild also inspired the state’s chief scientific adviser to try to sell the herd immunity approach that was supposed to allow the population to build up natural immunity against the virus (Kermani Reference Kermani2020). The proposal was retracted immediately after a modelling experiment conducted by the Imperial College COVID-19 Response Team (2020) revealed that about 250, 000 people could die from this strategy, whereas physical distancing measures would significantly limit deaths to roughly 20,000. By the time Johnson formally announced a lockdown on 24 March 2020, almost sixty days of crucial preparation and prevention time had already been wasted which, as observers pointed out, was likely to have resulted in more deaths (Abbasi Reference Abbasi2020).

Here, we see how amid the extreme severity and impact of the COVID-19 virus on the various aspects of human lives, the monopolistic securitization approach deployed by the British and Thai states allowed them to initially constrain the intersubjective process required to socially construct the pandemic as a real and tangible existential threat. In designing their respective securitization speech acts, both the British and Thai authorities emphasized the biopolitical imperative of saving and protecting lives which was systematically and consistently delivered throughout their respective campaigns. This biopolitical logic, as Baele Stephane and Rousseau (Reference Baele Stephane and Rousseau2023: 219) put it, ‘rests on the diffusion and internalization of norms of self-care and well-being as well as on the sacralization of life, rather than on hard security measures necessarily involving heavy sacrifices and life loss’. Following Foucault’s original conceptualization of the term, the speech acts used by Johnson and Chan-o-cha underscored the centrality of life as both the primary referent and the overarching objective of this biopower that is intended to ‘improve life, to prolong its duration, to improve its chances’ (as cited in Baele and Rousseau 2022: 2019).

By doing so, both the democratic British and authoritarian Thai states proved relatively successful in convincing the majority of ‘the people’ as their primary external audience about the ‘objective reality’ of COVID-19, a reality that, in turn, informed their interests and behaviours within this context. Indeed, because the ultimate goal of national security shifted from the defence of the sovereign state to the preservation of the people’s lives and their existence, the public was compelled to take on their responsibility as active partners in upholding this cause. By recalibrating how the public understood and enacted their own freedom, this specific framing of the securitization speech acts led to a situation where the conduct of regular British and Thai people was virtually governed at a distance (see Baele and Rousseau Reference Baele Stephane and Rousseau2023). Exploiting this context, the authorities in both the UK and Thailand had been largely effective in persuading their respective populations that the basic aim of the emergency measures implemented had always been to protect and save lives. In the UK, for example, the state continues to frame its security responses in the context of Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights which requires states to undertake the necessary measures to safeguard lives. In Thailand, the state continues to rely heavily on various iterations of the emergency decree in defeating the pandemic. But while this monopolistic securitization practised by the British and Thai states enabled such rigid, straightforward actions, it significantly diluted the intersubjectivity that was crucial to the issue’s social construction as a legitimate existential security threat.

In both cases, the security meanings pertaining to COVID-19 were produced mainly through the actions of the same small circle of state elites who were also responsible for the intersubjective authorization of those actions as part of ‘normal’ day-to-day politics (see Balzacq Reference Balzacq2008; Bigo Reference Bigo2002; Côté Reference Côté2016). These select few then move to cascade, socialize, and institutionalize these securitizing meanings within the larger society. The channels that should have been created by the initial securitizing move to facilitate dialogues and negotiations between the state and the people were largely blocked, limiting the latter’s capacity to influence the securitization process and the construction of security meanings resulting from this. Consequently, rather than actively contributing to the production of security meanings within the COVID-19 context, the boundary between the internal ‘high politics’ (state elites) and external ‘low politics’ (the people) audience was delineated in a manner that largely excluded ordinary members of the British and Thai public from the process.

By severely constraining the space through which the general public could co-articulate and co-create the security reality precipitated by the pandemic, the British and Thai states effectively reduced the former’s role to a security spectator whose main responsibility was to accept or reject the securitizing move presented to them. Put differently, the states’ monopolistic securitization of COVID-19 resulted in the public’s treatment as passive entities whose only task in the process was to approve or deny the security meanings constructed by the securitizing actors (see Balzacq Reference Balzacq2008; Côté Reference Côté2016). Viewed this way, the notion of intersubjectivity, as Côté (Reference Côté2016: 550) puts it, ‘is manifested only through the need for the actor to couch [their] securitizing moves in pre-existing, contextualized rhetoric and practices in order that they have a better chance of success’, ultimately undermining the ‘intersubjectiveness’ of the whole process. This, in turn, afforded the securitizing state elites greater leverage to make decisions concerning the pandemic’s urgency and exceptionality, including the types of extraordinary measures deemed necessary to effectively defeat the threat. As posited earlier, the other major consequence of the monopolistic securitization approach was the substantial weakening of the British and Thai public’s individual/agential and collective/institutional capacity to deliberate the emergency actions sought and implemented by their respective governments on their behalf.

4.2. Curtailing the audience’s individual/agential and collective/institutional capacity to deliberate the immediate emergency actions (proposition 2): ‘democratic’ versus ‘authoritarian’ extraordinary measures

On 8 December 2020, the UK finally deployed the world’s first COVID-19 vaccine (BBC 2020). The parliament members heading the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) trumpeted the state’s vaccination programme as a phenomenal success for saving countless lives and reducing pressure on the NHS. As the vaccines became available, the British state bolstered its monopolistic securitization of the pandemic further by portraying the COVID-19 vaccination as the most effective way to defeat the pandemic. The state has since implemented an aggressive vaccination campaign that emphasized the role of vaccines in building ‘a wall of defence around communities across the country’ and ‘saving countless lives and allowing a phased return to normality’ (UK Cabinet Office 2022). Such narratives were supported by the statements made by leading vaccinologists, including Sarah Gilbert, leader of the Oxford Astrazeneca vaccine team, who questioned the logic of those ‘ideologically opposed to a safe and cost-effective public health measure that saves millions of lives’ (cited in Semino Reference Semino2021).

In February 2022, fourteen months after the vaccine rollout, all remaining domestic restrictions across the UK were lifted subject to appropriate parliamentary scrutiny. Given these results, vaccines now ‘underpin all of these principles and form the basis of the state’s strategy for living with COVID-19’ as stated in the 2022 UK Guidance on COVID-19 Response. The said document also highlighted the defining role of effective vaccines in enabling the economy and society to reopen, thus giving the people the ability to ‘live with the virus’ (UK Cabinet Office 2022). The state message was clear: vaccination is the most effective way to protect those at risk from COVID-19. With the emergence of new variants, the state insists that ‘deeper and broader population immunity’ becomes even more necessary and can only be achieved if everyone gets all the doses of vaccination and boosters available to them (UK Cabinet Office 2022). To date, around 79.27% of the total UK population (estimated at 67 million) already received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine, making it one the largest vaccination programmes in the country’s history (Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center 2023).

But as the British made strides with mass inoculation, the Thai authorities had to wait for six months before they were able to finally roll out their own vaccination programme. While trying to procure COVID-19 vaccines, Thailand relied on the emergency decree imposed by the prime minister in attempting to control the pandemic. The country’s relative success in evading the worst of the pandemic for most of 2020 gave the impression that the decree was working (Beech Reference Beech2021). Nevertheless, as the country began to grapple with the third wave of the pandemic that pushed the number of infections to hundreds of thousands, the Thai officials, like their British counterparts, significantly enhanced their efforts to secure COVID-19 vaccines and convince the public to get inoculated as part of their wider monopolistic securitization of the pandemic.

At the forefront of Thailand’s vaccination strategy is the National Vaccine Institute (NVI) established through the National Vaccine Security Act 2018. The NVI’s National Policy and Strategic Plan for Vaccine Security aimed to provide all Thai people equal access to quality vaccines by implementing a host of national self-reliance programmes (Margetts Reference Margetts2022). This led to unprecedented investments in COVID-19 vaccine R&D and production in the country (Kategeaw et al., Reference Kategeaw, Youngkong, Taychakhoonavudh, Techathawat and Chaiyakunapruk2022). In June 2022, Thailand started human trials of two out of its four homegrown COVID-19 vaccine candidates. The goal was to develop vaccines that would fight the newer COVID-19 variants, including the South African and Indian variants (Peter Reference Peter2021). Until then, Thailand had to continue with its controversial strategy of mixing vaccines created by foreign companies to reach herd immunity by the end of the year (Associated Foreign Press 2021). Before these developments, the state procured a few million shots from China’s Sinovac and secured an agreement with AstraZeneca to let a local drugmaker, Siam Bioscience, manufacture its COVID-19 vaccine in the country (Peter Reference Peter2021). As of August 2023, 82.5% of the total Thai population (estimated at 71 million) already received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine (Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center 2023). While pursuing their respective vaccination programmes, the British and Thai authorities employed emergency measures and engaged in actions, at both intuitional and individual levels, that constituted different types of democratic violations ranging between illiberal and authoritarian practices.

Table 3 above provides examples of these non-democratic emergency measures and actions, which as previously mentioned, are not exclusively linked to a specific violation type but are all interconnected. The first three types include illiberal practices, that is, pandemic-related democratic violations resulting from (type 1) the state’s discriminatory actions on the basis of race, colour, sex, language, religion, or social origin; (type 2) derogations of inviolable human rights such as the right to life, freedom from torture and slavery, and freedom of thought, conscience, and religion; and (type 3) abuse of power and excessive use of force when implementing emergency measures that undermine the provision of secure and equal freedom for all.

Table 3.

Examples of the emergency measures implemented in the UK and Thailand that constituted democratic violations within the illiberal-authoritarian spectrum. Source: Based on the authors’ analysis

Examples of type 1 violations constituting discriminatory measures were the scapegoating of targeted ethnoreligious groups such as the Muslim and Burmese communities across the UK and Thailand, respectively, who were blamed by the British and Thai authorities for spreading the virus and causing the outbreak.Footnote ³ In terms of type 2 violations, derogations from non-derogable rights were evidenced by the British state’s ‘no jab, no job’ vaccine mandate for care home workers and NHS staff, particularly in England, and the dehumanizing actions taken by provincial Thai authorities against migrant workers groups, such as encircling their houses with barbed wires to physically restrict their movements and labelling them COVID convicts or criminals that further stigmatized and put them in precarious positions.Footnote ⁴ And concerning type 3 abusive enforcement violations, examples include the British police’s misuse of power and breach of civil liberties when enforcing the COVID-19 lockdowns across the UK, and the malicious intimidation, harassment, and prosecution of individuals charged under the Thai government’s Emergency Decree (B.E. 2548) for allegedly violating some vague and overbroad restrictions on their freedom of movement, expression, peaceful assembly, and public participation.Footnote ⁵ Together, these first three types of illiberal practices demonstrated by the British and Thai states constituted democratic violations that infringed on the personal autonomy and dignity of the people in the UK and Thailand during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Meanwhile, the next three types include authoritarian practices, that is, pandemic-related democratic violations resulting from the state’s (type 4) arbitrary and unnecessary prolonging of emergency measures due to the absence of limits; (type 5) vague formulation of laws enabling its executive to rule broadly by emergency decree; and (type 6) broader disinformation campaigns that systematically hinder public access to fact-based information. Examples of type 4 violations resulting from the lack of time limit on the emergency measures imposed were the inconsistent, uncertain, and unequal enforcement of lockdown rules coming from the British ministers and parliament in the UK, and the repeated extension of Thailand’s brutal emergency decree which critics dismissed as an unnecessary tactic for quelling political dissent and protest during COVID-19.Footnote ⁶ In terms of type 5 violations, disproportionate limitations on the role of the legislature were evident in the British ministers’ resort to ‘government and rule by decree’ without the usual, debate, discussion and votes in Parliament in the UK, and the Thai authorities’ imposition of severe state of emergency in response to the major street demonstrations led by student activists calling for the prime minister’s resignation and the establishment of a new constitution.Footnote ⁷ And concerning type 6 official disinformation campaign violations, examples include the deliberate attempts of the British ministers led by Johnson himself to mislead the Parliament over the ‘Partygate’ scandal in the UK, the Thai government’s deliberate attempts at hiding the pandemic reality on the ground by releasing low daily infection figures and covering up crucial information about people who have died or are suffering from long COVID.Footnote ⁸

Finally, the last type encompasses ‘intersectional’ practices that simultaneously undermine accountability and infringe personal autonomy and dignity, specifically, (type 7) restrictions on media freedoms. Such violations were observed in both the UK and Thailand through the censorship of alternative Covid-19 news to create one official narrative by specific sections of the British state, and the Thai officials’ banning of negative news reports believed to cause public fear and taking their critics to court for allegedly spreading false and misleading information about COVID situation in the country.Footnote ⁹

Here, we see how the monopolistic attempts of the British and Thai authorities in securitizing COVID-19 curtailed the capacity of their general public audience to deliberate the immediate emergency measures implemented by their respective authorities both at the individual/agential and collective/institutional levels. This, in turn, virtually made the UK and Thailand functionally similar to the extent that both their resulting security responses constituted varying levels and degrees of democratic violations within the same illiberalism-authoritarianism spectrum. In other words, whether it was the democratic UK or the authoritarian Thailand, both states engaged in violations of democratic standards as evidenced by these parallel sets of emergency measures that differed only in breadth and depth but not in kind. Amid the pandemic’s grave impact and the immense speed at which it spread, the monopolistic securitization of COVID-19 enacted by the British and Thai leaders shifted the normal processes of policymaking towards the politics of emergency crisis (see Lipscy Reference Lipscy2020), effectively displacing the ‘distinctive and divergent incentives created by democratic and authoritarian institutions’ as Schmotz and Tansey (Reference Schmotz and Tansey2023: p. 953) put it. Consequently, the regime-specific incentive and pressure structures that would have been highly central in policy decision-making under the usual, non-pandemic times, became less important and pronounced as the leaders from democratic and authoritarian states alike grappled blindly against COVID-19. Put differently, the gravity and exceptionality of this existential threat produced enormous new pressures and incentives that ultimately outweighed those induced by regime differences under normal circumstances (Schmotz and Tansey Reference Schmotz and Tansey2023).

The comparable manner in which these two ideologically opposed states resorted to this monopolistic securitization as an overarching pandemic approach that directed and influenced their respective policy strategies underscores COVID-19’s extreme severity and impact. As the world watched the pandemic claim millions of lives and hundreds of trillions of dollars, the normal rules and institutions of everyday politics in both democratic and authoritarian states came under intense scrutiny and were routinely upended during these extraordinary times. In arbitrarily suspending the conventional political practices and mechanisms, the predictable works and functions of established institutions were superseded by ad hoc emergency measures and arrangements despite the enormous uncertainties confronting the state authorities and political elites (see Kirk Reference Kirk2023; Kirk and McDonald Reference Kirk and McDonald2021). The UK and Thailand were clearly no exceptions from these trends amid the earlier failures of their respective governments in minimizing the pandemic’s devasting effects across all sectors.

Consequently, the British and Thai states’ monopolistic securitization of COVID-19 led to a closer alignment between the supposedly democratic and authoritarian policy mechanisms in the UK and Thailand than they would have normally been under non-pandemic contexts. This was particularly the case during the earlier stages of COVID-19 in which the differing value, mobilization, and electoral mechanisms between a democratic and an authoritarian regime became functionally ‘homogenized’ to the extent that helped facilitate security responses that constituted similar types of democratic violations and comparable examples as Table 3 illustrates.

In terms of value mechanisms, for example, the competing value systems influencing the significantly different emphasis being placed by democratic and authoritarian regimes on the issues of freedom and accountability or justice and the rule of law (Schmotz and Tansey Reference Schmotz and Tansey2023, see also, Dalton and Ong Reference Dalton and Ong2005; Welzel and Kirsch Reference Kirsch and Welzel2019; Stevens et al., Reference Stevens, Bishin and Barr2006) did not yield ontologically distinct emergency measures that would have prevented the former from implementing those that breached its democratic norms and principles. Similarly, the differing functions and structures of mobilization mechanisms found in democratic and authoritarian states that should have exposed democratic officials to their citizens’ actual concerns and policy preferences more than their authoritarian counterparts (Schmotz and Tansey Reference Schmotz and Tansey2023, see also, Hellmeier and Weidmann, Reference Hellmeier and Weidmann2020; Kadivar Reference Kadivar2018; McGuire Reference McGuire2013) did not prevent the former from wilfully ignoring their people’s grievances and unilaterally employing their emergency measures. Likewise, the opposing ethos and logic of the electoral mechanisms underpinning democratic and authoritarian governments that could have provided democratic elites with significant incentives to align their policies with public preferences to a much greater extent than authoritarian actors (Schmotz and Tansey Reference Schmotz and Tansey2023, see also Acemoglou and Robinson Reference Acemoglu and Robinson2006; Achen and Bartels Reference Achen and Bartels2017; Boix and Svolik Reference Boix and Svolik2013) did not result in emergency measures that necessarily maximized the former’s chances of securing further electoral incentives.

By restricting their public audience’s capacity to debate these immediate emergency actions resulting from the monopolistic securitization of COVID-19 amid the pandemic’s extreme severity and impact, the security responses produced by the democratic British and Thai states invariably resulted in democratic violations that varied only in extent and form, thus making them functionally similar. As noted earlier in our examination of their speech acts, the leaders of both countries justified their resort to such democracy-violating illiberal and authoritarian practices as being crucial for mitigating the spread of the virus and, therefore, saving lives. But do such democratic violations necessarily make the states’ security responses more effective? And how sustainable are these emergency measures? As we also posited earlier, as the pandemic protracted, the fundamental deliberative-iterative mechanism underpinning securitization enabled the British and Thai public audiences to gradually reclaim their role and space in the process, allowing them to challenge the appropriateness and legitimacy of the emergency measures unilaterally put in place by their respective states and weaken their monopolistic control.

4.3. Reclaiming the audience’s role and space in this deliberative-iterative securitization process (proposition 3): ‘democratic’ versus ‘authoritarian’ audience responses

For the British and Thai authorities, safe and effective vaccines created the pathway out of the pandemic. Yet, to this day, several groups from different quarters remain unwilling to get immunizations. This lack of intention and refusal to get vaccinated is referred to as ‘vaccine hesitancy’ and is defined by experts as the ‘behavioural delay in acceptance or refusal of vaccines despite availability of vaccine services’ (Freeman et al., Reference Freeman, Loe, Chadwick, Vaccari, Waite, Rosebrock, Jenner, Petit, Lewandowsky, Vanderslott and Innocenti2020: 1; MacDonald Reference MacDonald2015). A person’s hesitancy towards vaccines resides between the acceptance and refusal continuum and varies depending on the disease (Freeman et al., Reference Freeman, Loe, Chadwick, Vaccari, Waite, Rosebrock, Jenner, Petit, Lewandowsky, Vanderslott and Innocenti2020). Scientists researching people’s perceptions towards vaccines argue the decision to either accept or reject a vaccine is essentially a matter of weighing up the expected risks and benefits of the action. Hesitancy arises when a person believes that there is no drastic need for vaccination (i.e., complacency) or is concerned about the efficacy and safety of vaccines in general (i.e., lack of confidence) (Freeman et al., Reference Freeman, Loe, Chadwick, Vaccari, Waite, Rosebrock, Jenner, Petit, Lewandowsky, Vanderslott and Innocenti2020; see also, Larson et al., Reference Larson, Jarrett, Schulz, Chaudhuri, Zhou, Dube, Schuster, MacDonald and Wilson2015). Medical scholars have identified several reasons why some people remain highly sceptical of vaccines including (1) misconceptions over how immunization works, (2) significant distrust towards state and healthcare authorities, (3) the novelty and, therefore uncertainty associated with the new vaccines, (4) the general accessibility and availability of these vaccines (i.e., convenience), and (5) underlying social processes such as norms, values, and principles (Freeman et al., Reference Freeman, Loe, Chadwick, Vaccari, Waite, Rosebrock, Jenner, Petit, Lewandowsky, Vanderslott and Innocenti2020; see also, Fournet et al., Reference Fournet, Mollema, Ruijs, Harmsen, Keck, Durand, Cunha, Wamsiedel, Reis, French and Smit2018; Karafillakisa et al., Reference Karafillakisa, Simasa, Jarrett, Verger, Peretti-Watel, Dib and Larson2019).

In the UK and Thailand, several studies have specifically zeroed in on the impact of misinformation on people’s attitudes and perceptions towards COVID-19 vaccines. Scholars define misinformation as false or misleading information considered incorrect based on the best available evidence from relevant experts at the time (see Lazer et al., Reference Lazer, Baum, Benkler, Berinsky, Greenhill, Menczer, Metzger, Nyhan, Pennycook, Rothschild and Schudson2018; Vraga and Bode Reference Vraga and Bode2020). One of these studies revealed how ‘misinformation lowers intent to accept a COVID-19 vaccine’ in the UK (Loomba et al., Reference Loomba, de Figueiredo, Piatek, de Graaf and Larson2021: 338). In another study, researchers investigated how a wide range of COVID-19 misinformation resulted in ‘confusion, distress and mistrust’, ultimately leading to higher vaccine hesitancy among the locals in one UK city (Lockyer et al., Reference Lockyer, Islam, Rahman, Dickerson, Pickett, Sheldon, Wright, McEachan and Sheard2021: 1159). These findings were also observed in a number of studies investigating vaccine hesitancy and refusal in Thailand. One research examined how information sources impacted people’s willingness to get vaccinated and showed that those who refused vaccinations did not use the resources produced by public health centres or medical associations (Yoda et al., Reference Yoda, Suksatit, Tokuda and Katsuyama2022). In a related study, researchers found that vaccine illiteracy and restriction on vaccine choice were also significantly linked to negative attitudes towards vaccination (Sirikalyanpaiboon et al., Reference Sirikalyanpaiboon, Ousirimaneechai, Phannajit, Pitisuttithum, Jantarabenjakul, Chaiteerakij and Paitoonpong2021). Meanwhile, the fear and hesitancy associated with misinformation and illiteracy also proved to adversely affect COVID-19 vaccine acceptance by raising the people’s ‘concerns about safety, general lack of trust and doubts about the efficiency and provenience of the vaccine’ (Siewchaisakul et al., Reference Siewchaisakul, Sarakarn, Nanthanangkul, Longkul, Boonchieng and Wungrath2022).

Together, these studies underline the importance of implementing vaccination programs that are ‘focused, localized, and empathetic’ to address vaccine hesitancy amid the growing misinformation about immunization in general (Lockyer et al., Reference Lockyer, Islam, Rahman, Dickerson, Pickett, Sheldon, Wright, McEachan and Sheard2021: 1159). But instead of taking this route, both the British and Thai authorities aggressively pushed for what may be termed as de facto mandatory vaccination to deal with the vocal and resolute anti-vaccine groups among their respective populations.

In the democratic UK, the government passed regulations on 11 November 2021 that made COVID-19 vaccination a condition of deployment for health and social care staff (UK Department of Health and Social Care 2022). For example, nearly all NHS staff were instructed to get at least the first vaccine dose by 3 February 2022 to avoid the risk of losing their jobs (McKee Reference McKee2022). While contentious, the mandate led to an increase in vaccine uptake within the sector after 127,000 members came forward to be vaccinated (Iacobucci Reference Iacobucci2022). Despite these figures, however, the fact that more than 80,000 staff (5.4% of the total) were still unvaccinated by 16 January 2022 cast significant doubt on the wisdom and feasibility of such regulations (Iacobucci Reference Iacobucci2022). The mandate’s credibility was undermined further after it was blamed for the exodus of about 40,000 staff in the care home sector (Iacobucci Reference Iacobucci2022). These unforeseen outcomes compelled the UK government to announce its decision to revoke the said policies three days before the initial deadline given to the unvaccinated staff and were all officially cancelled on 15 March 2022 (UK Department of Health and Social Care 2022). The state’s last-minute U-turn received mixed reactions from the British public. Amid the ‘acute workforce shortages and record waiting lists’, the leaders of the British Medical Association and Royal College of Physicians welcomed the news while still encouraging members to get vaccinated (Iacobucci Reference Iacobucci2022). On the contrary, the NHS chief executives raised their concerns over the state’s policy reversal and its implications on the ‘wider messaging about the importance of vaccination for the population as a whole’ (NHS Confederation 2022).

The same situation has also largely played out in the authoritarian Thailand. Although the state did not make COVID-19 inoculation mandatory, those who refused to get vaccinated have since faced several problems. Among the Thai frontliners (e.g., doctors, nurses, and village health volunteers) vaccine hesitancy also proved to be a problem (Siewchaisakul et al., Reference Siewchaisakul, Sarakarn, Nanthanangkul, Longkul, Boonchieng and Wungrath2022). While some rejected vaccination in general, others refused certain brands, particularly non-Western vaccines that were deemed unsafe and ineffective (Mueangpoon et al., Reference Mueangpoon, Inchan, Kaewmuneechoke, Rattana, Budsratid, Japakiya, Ngamchaliew and Vichitkunakorn2022; Sirikalyanpaiboon et al., Reference Sirikalyanpaiboon, Ousirimaneechai, Phannajit, Pitisuttithum, Jantarabenjakul, Chaiteerakij and Paitoonpong2021). The regulations imposed by the state meant that although it is illegal to dismiss unvaccinated workers, many were pressured to take whatever vaccine was available or risk losing their jobs (Kitro et al., Reference Kitro, Sirikul and Piankusol2021). Outside the health sector, unvaccinated people have faced similar challenges. Most business firms in the country have put in place measures that effectively require employees to get vaccinated in line with the guidelines coming from the MOPH. Those who refused were accused of being irresponsible and reported experiencing discrimination in their respective workplaces and communities (Khajornrungsilp Reference Khajornrungsilp2021).

To this day, there is no consensus regarding this ethical dilemma even among human rights experts. While others argue that mandatory vaccination, in principle, is compatible with human rights law (King et al., Reference King, Ferraz and Jones2022), others contest that the mere spread of such policies does not necessarily mean that they do not violate these rights (Dzehtsiarou Reference Dzehtsiarou2021). As Kanstantsin Dzehtsiarou (Reference Dzehtsiarou2021) notes, the word ‘compulsory’ can have different meanings, from vaccinating physically retrained patients (which certainly violates human rights) to sanctioning individuals who fail to comply with the requirement (which may not constitute a violation). Under a mandatory vaccination policy, two issues demand careful consideration on the part of the state: (1) who gets to be exempted (if any); and (2) what punishment to impose for non-compliance (Dzehtsiarou Reference Dzehtsiarou2021). Denying vulnerable individuals the choice to opt out despite having legitimate health-related reasons, for instance, will be a violation of human rights. Likewise, imposing brutal punishments such as huge fines or imprisonment for those who refuse vaccinations also risks human rights infringements. Other groups also rejected the introduction of vaccine passports or COVID status certifications as ‘an innocuous route to freedoms’, when they are simply the by-product of the government’s failed pandemic response (Liberty 2021). Indeed, the policy of mandating COVID-19 vaccination is difficult because it requires the state to strike a fair balance between multiple, and at times, conflicting interests and within the ambit of human rights law (Dzehtsiarou Reference Dzehtsiarou2021; King et al., Reference King, Ferraz and Jones2022).

Despite their benefits, the UK and Thai states’ respective COVID-19 vaccination programmes have become emotional and polarizing debates, implemented in a manner that did not take human rights considerations into account more fully. The states’ lack of transparency in justifying their decision-making, coupled with the failure of several of their authorities to observe the very same COVID-19 rules they imposed on the regular people, particularly during the death-filled lockdowns, fuelled enormous anger and resentment among the British and Thai public (Ratcliffe Reference Ratcliffe2020; Smith et al., Reference Smith, Duffy, Moxham-Hall, Strang, Wessely and Rubin2021). Despite the official proclamations that these emergency procedures were necessary, proportionate, and based on relevant scientific evidence intended to minimize overall risks to life, many have remained highly critical of their impact on individuals’ personal freedoms and human rights, be it in the democratic UK and even in authoritarian Thailand.

Here, we see how as COVID-19 began to protract beyond its initial phase, the British and Thai public audiences were able to gradually reclaim their role and space in the securitization process by exploiting the fundamental deliberative-iterative mechanism underpinning it. This, in turn, enabled them to start contesting the emergency measures unilaterally imposed on them at the earlier stages of the pandemic and, in doing so, countered the monopolistic powers wielded by the state securitizing actors. These dynamics were captured through the continued resistance of specific segments of the British and Thai populations against the security responses implemented on their behalf, particularly the vaccination programmes and the accompanying NPIs rolled out in their respective countries.

Over time, the monopolistic attempts of the British and Thai officials to securitize COVID-19 generated conflicting interpretations of their parallel securitizing moves on the part of their respective public audiences, resulting in disagreements and differences vis-à-vis the security meanings produced. Although their individual/agential and collective/institutional capacity to contribute to earlier securitizing moves launched on their behalf was significantly undercut, it did not preclude them from reshaping the subsequent deliberations and iterations of the securitization process initially monopolized by their states in response to the pandemic’s extreme severity and impact. Put differently, despite these public audiences’ reduced wherewithal to inform the original security speech acts and emergency measures unilaterally imposed upon them, as the pandemic continued indefinitely, the former gradually regained their ability to change the course and outcome of the monopolistic securitizing attempts made by their states. As demonstrated by the much-maligned anti-vaxxers camps in both the UK and Thailand, as the pandemic progressed, the audience began to increasingly challenge the state’s framing of both the security issue and its accompanying emergency measures, compelling the latter to rethink and revise the direction and content of their securitization efforts. This underscores how the British and Thai public audiences’ dissenting views and actions directly, albeit unevenly influenced the evolution of the COVID-19 policy strategies developed and employed by their respective states as time passed by.

Such dynamics illuminate securitization’s role in establishing and constructing shared security meanings through ‘repeated deliberative interactions [between actors and audiences], with past interactions affecting the nature of future interactions’ (Côté Reference Côté2016: 552). By actively reacting to the succeeding securitizing moves by the British and Thai authorities beyond COVID-19’s initial phase, audience members from various quarters of their respective societies were able to contribute to the modification of both the substance of the security speeches and the forms of security responses emanating from these. This recalibration of the previously monopolistic securitization triggered by the British and Thai states at the onset of the pandemic led to the renegotiation of ‘shared’ security understandings and values between them and their respective public audiences. As the British and Thai experiences show, with the progression of COVID-19, the ordinary members of the public espousing various interests also progressively found ways to exploit their capacity to mobilize and take actions in pursuit of their preferred security outcomes and contesting the structural impediments preventing them from influencing this essentially intersubjective securitization process. Together, these highlight some of the means by which the audience, rather than being largely passive throughout the process, could challenge the monopolistic securitizing moves instigated by the state on its behalf and, by doing so, help determine how ‘democratic’ and ‘authoritarian’ states function and respond, specifically during a pandemic.

In the UK and Thailand, the public audience exerted collective pressure on their respective state authorities in several different ways such as staging large civilian protests against lockdown measures that helped weaken the level of urgency and policy response demanded by the state leadersFootnote ¹⁰ and/or punishing those leaders whom they believed to have played a key role in the implementation of emergency measures without their inputs and consent by threatening to vote them out office or pressuring them to resign.Footnote ¹¹

Thus, notwithstanding the British and Thai states’ attempts at monopolizing the securitization of COVID-19, the subsequent responses from their respective populations reveal the underlying potential power of the public audiences to not only engage with but transform the process in ways that consolidate their relative influence and position vis-à-vis the state authorities initiating the process (see Balzacq Reference Balzacq2015; Côté Reference Côté2016). In the UK, for example, the Joint Committee on Human Rights Report of the House of Commons and House of Lords (2020: 5) admitted that ‘inevitably, attempts to save lives through state actions including the restriction of movements, gatherings, and school closures have engaged numerous other rights’, causing many to experience some of the ‘widest and deepest set of government interferences with their rights in their lifetimes’. The report recognized the difficulty of this balancing act, particularly during the early months of the pandemic when vaccines were unavailable, and thus emphasized the importance of justifying the state’s preventive acts that interfered with human rights (UK House of Commons 2020).

Meanwhile, in Thailand, the public’s disaffection with the government grew in parallel with the spread of COVID-19, reinvigorating the long-standing protest movement demanding the prime minister’s resignation. Critics from various segments of the population continue to challenge those in power for unilaterally invoking arbitrary regulations that disproportionately constrain the basic human rights of the Thai people, including their rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly (Wolf Reference Wolf2022). The passage of the draconian emergency decree was rejected by several opposition groups as a mere excuse to crack down on peaceful demonstrations triggered in large part by the state’s authoritarian approach to the pandemic and gave the Thai state ‘unchecked powers to suppress fundamental freedoms’ that enabled it to manufacture its own human rights crisis (Human Rights Watch 2020; Wolf Reference Wolf2022). As can be gleaned from the British and Thai experiences with COVID-19, the audience’s successful attempts at re-inserting itself right back at the centre of what should have been an intersubjective construction of security meanings and values from the onset, and reclaiming their individual/agential and collective/institutional wherewithal in the process to actively deliberate the appropriateness and legitimacy of the emergency measures unilaterally decided and imposed by the state, underscore the limits and unsustainability of monopolistic securitization as an overarching pandemic approach.

To this extent, the audiences do not just respond to any given securitization stimulus but possess the ‘moral authority’ needed to legitimately approve and deliver the objectives that the securitizing actors seek to achieve (see Balzacq et al., Reference Balzacq, Léonard and Ruzicka2016; Côté Reference Côté2016; Vuori Reference Vuori2008). As active, rather than passive, agents, the audiences consciously contribute to the relative ‘success or ‘failure’ of future securitization moves by occupying a space in the intersubjective (re)construction, (re)negotiation, and (re)legitimation of shared security realities, meanings, and values. That the intersubjectivities pertaining to specific security issues such as the COVID-91 pandemic are deeply interwoven into the audience’s interpretations of and reactions to the corresponding securitizing moves suggests that the audience has always remained vital in the creation and reproduction of the contextual circumstances of all security interactions (see Côté Reference Côté2016; Klüfers Reference Klüfers2014; Salter Reference Salter2008) whether within a (more or less) democratic or an authoritarian context.

In sum, these empirical and theoretical insights resulting from our investigation of the monopolistic securitization of COVID-19 as an overarching pandemic approach illustrate and explain: (1) how the democratic British and authoritarian Thai states initially constrained the intersubjective process required to socially construct the pandemic as a primary existential security threat with marginal consideration for audience consent; (2) how, as a result, the individual/agential and collective/institutional capacities of the British and Thai public audiences to deliberate the immediate emergency measures deployed by their respective authorities was significantly curtailed; and (3) how the deliberative-iterative mechanism driving securitization allowed the general British and Thai public audiences to gradually reclaim their role and space in the process, thus enabling them to finally contest the emergency measures unilaterally imposed by their respective states. Taken together, these interlinking dynamics and conditions underpinning and resulting from the politics of monopolistic securitization reveal how and why pandemics like COVID-19 can make otherwise ontologically distinct regimes such as the supposedly democratic UK and authoritarian Thailand, functionally similar by compelling them to adopt security responses that differ not exactly in kind but mainly in magnitude and scale, that is, within the illiberalism-authoritarianism continuum.