ABSTRACT The exceptional forms of state power mobilized under COVID-19 have attracted scholarly attraction and created important insights on the pandemic politics. However, it seems that the current understanding tends to regard the states’ responses as a zero-sum game between two powers only, a game in which liberal rule in varying degrees is traded for raw sovereign power. Inspired by the notion of biopower, this article aims to provide a more nuanced account of the various powers invoked to handle the pandemic. Based on the case of Denmark, it is argued that three forms of power were mobilized: sovereignty, discipline and security mechanisms. Yet, indirect security mechanisms informed by epidemiological knowledge and modelling have played a far more comprehensive role than the two other power mechanisms. In a complex interaction with epidemiological expertize, liberal governmentalities limited the mobilization of sovereignty and discipline and, instead, tended to endorse indirect security mechanisms.

ABSTRACT The paper examines some of the ways in which the problematic of activation is put into play in the European Employment Strategy (EES) and Danish employment policies. The limitations of causal analysis and convergence approaches are discussed and a different analytical framework based on the concept of normalization is proposed. It is argued that while various forms of activation were present in Denmark well before the launching of the EES in 1997/1998, the latter has contributed to the normalization of the Danish employment policies by sustaining activation as the key element of such policies and by disregarding political interventions based on alternative problematizations of labour and well-being.