Toward a Democratic Theory of Emergency Medical Services: Solidarity, Sovereignty, Temporality

Abstract

This essay considers whether a democratic theory of the routine work of medical first responders could help inform the development of a more robust culture of sovereignty in modern liberal democracies. The goal of such a theory would be to make liberalism better able to foster human flourishing and more likely to endure as a political form. The essay draws on three main intuitions. First, the local structures of Emergency Medical Services (EMS), especially volunteer ambulance corps as institutions of community solidarity and mutual aid, can form the basis of an emancipatory biopolitics. EMS thereby offers a means to activate democratic self-governance more broadly. Second, medical first-responder protocols and practices have the potential to resonate