Theorising the Interregnum: Fraenkel’s Dual State and Contemporary Fascism

AStA Uni Hamburg
Von-Melle-Park 5
Room 0029

Largely forgotten, Fraenkel’s phenomenal work The Dual State does not, as if often wrongly assumed, offer a theory of the Nazi regime. Written between 1933 and 1938 (before, that is, the war and the holocaust), the Dual State offers the most coherent account of the transitional moment between parliamentary rule and authoritarianism. Centred around the puzzling co-existence of a normative and an arbitrary state, the Dual State has become, once again and inadvertently, an indispensable framework for understanding the contemporary predicament.

Pavlos Roufos is an economic historian living in Berlin. His Book “A Happy Future ist a Thing of the Past: The Greek Crisis and Other Disasters” was published in 2018.