Democracy in a Global Emergency: Five Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic

As countries around the world went into lockdown, we turned to 32 leading scholars working on different aspects of democracy and asked them what they think about how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted democracy. In this article, we synthesize the reflections of these scholars and present five key in...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Democratic theory (Brooklyn (New York, N.Y.)) N.Y.)), 2020-12, Vol.7 (2), p.v-xix
Main Authors: Afsahi, Afsoun, Beausoleil, Emily, Dean, Rikki, Ercan, Selen A, Gagnon, Jean-Paul
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Coronaviruses
COVID-19
Democracy
Democratization
Epidemics
Inequality
Intellectuals
Pandemics
United Kingdom
Citations: Items that this one cites
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Summary:As countries around the world went into lockdown, we turned to 32 leading scholars working on different aspects of democracy and asked them what they think about how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted democracy. In this article, we synthesize the reflections of these scholars and present five key insights about the prospects and challenges of enacting democracy both during and after the pandemic: (1) COVID-19 has had corrosive effects on already endangered democratic institutions, (2) COVID-19 has revealed alternative possibilities for democratic politics in the state of emergency, (3) COVID-19 has amplified the inequalities and injustices within democracies, (4) COVID-19 has demonstrated the need for institutional infrastructure for prolonged solidarity, and (5) COVID-19 has highlighted the predominance of the nation-state and its limitations. Collectively, these insights open up important normative and practical questions about what democracy should look like in the face of an emergency and what we might expect it to achieve under such circumstances.
ISSN:2332-8894
2332-8908
DOI:10.3167/dt.2020.070201