Covid-19 - A Political Science Perspective.

The Covid-19 pandemic has significantly increased the use of knowledge and scientific expertise in policymaking. Governments around the world have relied on epidemiologists and virologists to formulate their non-pharmaceutical responses (e.g., lockdowns) to the massive public health crisis, and to devise and implement their health care and vaccination strategies. However, the Covid-19 pandemic is also a public policy matter. The public health crisis exacerbates economic inequalities, creates new social cleavages, affects party politics and public support for the government, and the stability of the political system. Political science can enhance our understanding of the political, social, and economic implications of the pandemic, and inform policymakers on a large variety of key issues, including the performance of public health systems, the role played by the main political actors in different countries, the evolution of public (dis)satisfaction with governments’ handling of the crisis, and the unfolding of international cooperation in the management of the crisis. So as to stimulate reflection and take stock of ongoing research, we released a call for contributions for the current Swiss Political Science Review (SPSR) special issue on Covid19 – A Political Science Perspective in September 2020. The call has met an extraordinary success. We received 107 proposals – a number which testifies to the interest and necessity of such an initiative – among which we selected the finest, most pertinent, and most feasible in the short time frame at disposal, while also trying to cover a broad range of topics. The selected format of shorter research notes has been instrumental in ensuring a speedy peer review process and timely publication – also thanks to our external reviewers, who agreed upon and have made themselves available for the accelerated review procedure. The contributions to this special issue point to a number of key insights. Taken together, they depict the outbreak of Covid-19 as a critical juncture that confronted policy-makers with a “super-wicked problem” emerging in a situation of highest uncertainty. Policy responses have frequently been conceived and implemented with an experimental character and have produced a number of unintended consequences. First, various contributions concentrate on the determinants of policy responses to the public health crisis. They have shown how the type and scope of policy responses to the Covid-19 crisis have been affected by policy dynamics and institutional factors. The role of social media has been portrayed as central for shaping the public debate and the spread of (dis)information in the wake of the emergency (Gemenis; Gilardi et al.), especially in a context where policy frames decisively affect citizens’ attitudes and preferences for containment strategies and risk management programmes (Olmastroni et al.). Against this background, independent regulators have become central for the governance of the Covid-19 ‘infodemic’ by gaining control over sectoral expertise in the absence of preexisting policy interventions (Di Mascio et al.). Policy responses have also been partially determined by policies adopted in other jurisdictions, eventually leading to a certain convergence of policy responses over time, e.g., regarding restrictions to internal and cross-border mobility (Rausis and HoffmeyerZlotnik). Yet, a fine-grained calibration of policy interventions is warranted, as perceptions and behaviour, such as vaccine hesitancy, vary across social groups (Knotz et al.) Swiss Political Science Review 27(2): 227–228 doi:10.1111/spsr.12468