The Resilience of Democracy in the Midst of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Massart, Tom; Vos, Thijs; Egger, Clara; Dupuy, Claire; Morel-Jean, Constance; Berton, Raul Magni; Oberwittler, Dietrich

doi:10.5553/plc/.000018

Cited by 5 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 15 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…No crisis has recently tested democracy as much as the COVID-19 pandemic [ 5 , 6 ]. The pandemic has had enormous impacts to the society, economy, health systems, and everyday lives globally.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

COVID-19 and democracy: a scoping review

Sorsa,

Kivikoski

2023

BMC Public Health

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Background The resilience of democracy is tested under exogenous shocks such as crises. The COVID-19 pandemic has recently tested the resilience of democratic institutions and practices around the world. Aim The purpose of this article is to scope the early research literature that discusses democracy and the COVID-19 pandemic. We review scientific journal articles published during the first two years of the pandemic. We ask three research questions in scoping this body of literature: (1) what are the key topic areas of all published research that associates itself with both democracy and COVID-19, (2) what kinds of conceptual and theoretical contributions has research literature that more specifically discusses democracy under the pandemic produced, and (3) what are the impacts of democracy to the pandemic and vice versa according to empirical research? Methods The scoping review methodology draws on systematic literature search strategies, computational methods, and manual coding. The systematic Web of Science search produced 586 articles for which we conducted a Correlated Topic Model. After technical and manual screening, we identified 94 journal articles that were manually coded. Results The early research on democracy and the COVID-19 pandemic offers a versatile body of scholarship. The topic modeling shows that the scholarship discusses issues of crises, governance, rights, society, epidemiology, politics, electorate, technology, and media. The body of papers with conceptual and theoretical contributions has offered new insights on the difficulties, possibilities, and means to maintain democracy under a pandemic. Empirical research on democracy’s impact on the COVID-19 pandemic and vice versa varies in terms of methodology, geographical scope, and scientific contributions according to the direction of influence studied. Democracy appears to have a significant impact on some aspects of policy responses and epidemiological characteristics of the pandemic. In most parts of the world, the scope, franchise, and authenticity of democracy narrowed down due to the pandemic, albeit in most cases only temporarily. Conclusions A significant number of papers show that the pandemic has accentuated democratic backsliding but is unlikely to have undermined established democracies that have proved resilient in face of the pandemic. But empirical research has also made visible some weak signals of antidemocratic tendencies that may become more accentuated in the longer run.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

COVID-19 and democracy: a scoping review

Sorsa,

Kivikoski

2023

BMC Public Health

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

A Comparative Journey into COVID-19 Policies in Europe

Egger,

Magni-Berton

2024

International Series on Public Policy

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This introductory chapter discusses the specificities of crisis-management during the COVID-19 pandemic in Europe and presents the main purpose of this book. It highlights the importance of collecting comparative and legislative data on pandemic containment to be able to evaluate emergency public policies. It then presents the EXCEPTIUS dataset, its methods and the indicators it uses to capture the stringency of COVID-19 exceptional policies. Based on legal data from 32 European countries, this dataset documents a high degree of variability between these countries, particularly regarding the concentration of power and the reduction of individual liberties.

show abstract

The resilience of parliamentary oversight during the COVID-19 pandemic

Chiru

2023

West European Politics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The Resilience of Democracy in the Midst of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Cited by 5 publications

References 15 publications

COVID-19 and democracy: a scoping review

COVID-19 and democracy: a scoping review

A Comparative Journey into COVID-19 Policies in Europe

The resilience of parliamentary oversight during the COVID-19 pandemic

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About