Previous research has neglected how repeated declarations of states of emergency (SsoE) in response to the same emergency may combine with executive overreach and underreach within a single jurisdiction, undermining the authority of the SsoE as a legal institution and increasing the vulnerability of the constitutional system as a result. This article examines how decision-makers’ commitment to a culture of justification is central to avoiding emergency mismanagement via underreach, overreach or their combination. The simultaneous instances of executive overreach and underreach as emergency management failures are studied via the Slovak case, which was celebrated for its initial response to the COVID-19 pandemic but castigated for its failure to contain the subsequent waves. The analysis of the legal framework of the SsoE and the justifications for SsoE declarations uncovers the lack of justifications for the patterns of simultaneous executive underreach and overreach, underscoring the elusiveness of these categories. The limited justifications for the decisions demonstrated by the “government in panic” point to the undermining of the SsoE as a legal institution. The article concludes with highlighting how leaders’ role conceptions as democratic emergency managers might be necessary to sustain the authority of the SsoE.

先前的研究忽视了为应对同一紧急情况而反复宣布紧急状态（SsoE）如何与单一管辖范围内的行政越权和越权结合在一起，从而损害了紧急状态作为法律机构的权威并增加了宪法制度的脆弱性因此。本文探讨了决策者对合理性文化的承诺如何对于避免因范围不足、范围过大或两者兼而有之而导致的紧急情况管理不善至关重要。通过斯洛伐克的案例研究了行政人员过度干预和干预不足作为应急管理失败的同时发生的情况，斯洛伐克因其对 COVID-19 大流行的初步反应而受到赞扬，但因其未能遏制后续浪潮而受到严厉批评。对 SsoE 法律框架和 SsoE 声明理由的分析揭示了同时执行行政权力不足和过度的模式缺乏理由，强调了这些类别的难以捉摸。 “恐慌中的政府”所表现出的决策理由有限，这表明上海证券交易所作为一个法律机构的地位受到了损害。文章最后强调了领导者作为民主应急管理者的角色概念对于维持 SsoE 的权威可能是必要的。