How do state authorities act under existential uncertainty? Hypotheses on the social logic of political decision-making processes during the Coronavirus pandemic

Abstract

After a critical examination of the rational model of politics, this article discusses an alternative explanatory model in order to better understand and explain state response patterns and decision-making processes for containing the Coronavirus pandemic in its various phases from a sociological perspective. In doing so, I draw on central considerations of political sociology and organisational studies in order to reconstruct the social logic of the (non-)action of state authorities with special regard to the case examples of Germany and Austria (action under radical uncertainty, expert delegation, isomorphism of state action, path dependency of decisions, promissory legitimacy, collective morality of the “anxiety community” as a social driver of pandemic management). The article concludes with some general considerations on the vaccination exit strategy as well as on the problem of strategic ignorance and the logic of performative-symbolic action by state decision-makers.

Citizenship in times of crisis: biosocial state–citizen relations during COVID-19 in Austria

“…Contrary to the expert framing of the pandemic phase in medico-biological terms (Kraemer 2022 ), at least in its early stages, citizens soon came to understand the pandemic as biosocial , rather than merely biological. In this paper, we were able to identify a shift in our respondents’ perceptions from April–May to October 2020 from a narrow to a broader understanding of health, with this shift occurring in two steps.…”