From a crisis of confidence towards confidence in a crisis
Reema Patel · Manchester University Press eBooks · 2024
COVID-19 resulted in democratic nation states worldwide implementing a state of emergency, immediately imposing restrictions on individual liberty – for instance, the freedom to live, travel and work. In many instances, restrictions were imposed without clarity about the terms, conditions and circumstances under which they would be lifted, creating concern about the long-term health of democratic states – and placing democracy itself into lockdown. Despite the evident strain placed on core democratic values and rights, policymakers, scientists and researchers also simultaneously relied on the core democratic principles of rights and responsibility to (in some instances successfully, and in other instances, unsuccessfully) generate legitimacy for their actions, encourage compliance and engender wider social support. These tensions created a crisis of confidence in the pandemic response and the institutions responsible for leading them, rather than confidence in a crisis. Policymakers needed to recognise that they were both relying on and reconstituting the ‘social contract’ at a time of crisis, with citizens as potential active co-creators of the contract, rather than simply passive citizens. Drawing from a wide range of case studies and the findings of citizen juries on good governance undertaken during the pandemic, I argue in this chapter that democratic nation states need, in future crises, to create participatory infrastructures for democracy that act as a check against the risks of concentrating executive power through the blunt instruments of emergency decision-making. Such participatory structures would act to reduce the risk that democracy itself is ‘paused’ or placed in ‘lockdown’.