Democracy State Capacity And The Governance Of Covid 19 In Asia Oceania

This book examines the public health responses to the COVID-19 pandemic in the Asia-Oceania region and their implications for democratic backsliding in the period January 2020 to mid-2021. The contributions discuss three key questions: How did political institutions in Asia-Oceania create incentives for effective public health responses to the COVID-19 outbreak? How did state capacities enhance governments’ ability to implement public health responses? How have governance responses affected the democratic quality of political institutions and processes? Together, the analyses reveal the extent to which institutions prompted an effective public health response and highlights that a high-capacity state was not a necessary condition for containing the spread of COVID-19 during the early phase of the pandemic. By combining quantitative and qualitative analyses, the volume also shows that the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the quality of democratic institutions has been uneven across Asia-Oceania. Guided by a comprehensive theoretical framework, this will be an invaluable resource for scholars and students of political science, policy studies, public health and Asian studies.

Covid-19 and Governance focuses on the relationship between governance institutions and approaches to Covid-19 and health outcomes. Bringing together analyses of Covid-19 developments in countries and regions across the world with a wide-angle lens on governance, this volume asks: what works, what hasn’t and isn’t, and why? Organized by region, the book is structured to follow the spread of Covid-19 in the course of 2020, through Asia, the Middle East, Europe, the Americas, and Africa. The analyses explore a number of key themes, including public health systems, government capability, and trust in government—as well as underlying variables of social cohesion and inequality. This volume combines governance, policies, and politics to bring wide international scope and analytical depth to the study of the Covid-19 pandemic. Together the authors represent a diverse and formidable database of experience and understanding. They include sociologists, anthropologists, scholars of development studies and public administration, as well as MD specialists in public health and epidemiology. Engaged and free of jargon, this book speaks to a wide global public—including scholars, students, and policymakers—on a topic that has profound and broad appeal.

The collection examines state-society relations during the COVID-19 pandemic, from governance at the outset of the pandemic to vaccine rollouts, via a series of case studies from around the world. With a focus on the Global South, the book includes chapters on the experiences of - Angola, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Bolivia, Argentina, Brazil, Jamaica and Indonesia as well as contributions from the Global North - on Sweden, Canada, Czech Republic and New Zealand. The collection demonstrates that the effects of the pandemic can only be properly revealed by looking at the regional and local contexts in which states and societies experienced it. Contributors examine themes such as the nature of contemporary democracy, state capacity, the legitimacy of state institutions, and trust in government, questions of social solidarity, and forms and impacts of inequality. Focusing on national (or sub-national) cases, each chapter analyses the underlying forces and structures revealed when the authority of the state is brought to bear on the agency of citizens under emergency conditions. In doing so, contributors embed analysis of pandemic governance in the historical context of each country or region, highlighting how political choices, histories of the state's treatment of citizens and the orientations of a region's elites shaped the actions taken by the state. The book will be of interest to those looking to understand how the pandemic was interpreted, accepted, or contested at the local (national or sub-national) level and to those interested in state-society relations more generally. It will appeal to scholars and students interested in questions of pandemic government from a social scientific point of view and especially to those interested in perspectives from the Global South.

This volume studies the likely impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on future policy making in India and other democracies. It critically exmines the available theoretical frameworks, models and approaches used in the policy making process and studies their contemporary relevance.

"The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic marks the most significant, singular global disruption since World War II, with health, economic, political, and security implications that will ripple for years to come." -Global Trends 2040 (2021) Global Trends 2040-A More Contested World (2021), released by the US National Intelligence Council, is the latest report in its series of reports starting in 1997 about megatrends and the world's future. This report, strongly influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic, paints a bleak picture of the future and describes a contested, fragmented and turbulent world. It specifically discusses the four main trends that will shape tomorrow's world: - Demographics-by 2040, 1.4 billion people will be added mostly in Africa and South Asia. - Economics-increased government debt and concentrated economic power will escalate problems for the poor and middleclass. - Climate-a hotter world will increase water, food, and health insecurity. - Technology-the emergence of new technologies could both solve and cause problems for human life. Students of trends, policymakers, entrepreneurs, academics, journalists and anyone eager for a glimpse into the next decades, will find this report, with colored graphs, essential reading.

This book traces ideological trends in China through a range of historical and comparative perspectives, spanning the ancient belief systems of Confucianism, Legalism, and Taoism to political ideologies of the present day. Chapters in this edited volume are divided into four parts: traditional Chinese ideology, ideology of the Republic, Maoism as an ideology and post Mao ideology, zoning in on specific historical periods from the Qing and Republic periods to the reform era, as well as the period after the founding of the PRC – through which Mao Zedong’s political thought is notably discussed from the perspective of epistemology and the global impact of Maoism. Key topics include Sun Yat-sen as the Father of the Republic, Li Dazhao, the early Marxist theoretician, Chiang Kai-shek and his nationalist Fascism, Liang Qichao’s emotional appeals through liberal political discourse, Jiang Zemin’s theory of ‘Three Represents’ de-emphasising the Marxist concept of class, Hu Jintao’s theory of ‘Harmonious Society’ and Xi Jinping’s political thought. Contributions from world-leading scholars take both comparative and critical approaches, examining not only how studies of ideology are relevant, but how Chinese ideologies have retained their own characteristics distinct to the West. As the first comprehensive study of this subject in the English language, Chinese Ideology will appeal to students and scholars of philosophy, political science, history, and Asian studies more broadly.

This book provides the readers with a set of vivid studies of the variety of national approaches that were taken to responding to COVID-19 in the first few months of the pandemic. At its core is a series of reports addressing the national responses to COVID-19 in Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, Latin America, and the Middle East and North Africa. Country reports present the actions, events and circumstances of governmental response and make an early attempt at producing insights and at distilling lessons. Eyewitness reports from civil servants and public managers contain practical points of view on the challenges of the coronavirus pandemic. In different chapters, editors and contributors provide an analytical framework for the description and explanation of government measures and their consequences in a rich variety and diversity of national settings. They also situate the governmental responses to the pandemic in the context of the global governance agenda, stress the important relationship between governmental authorities and citizens, and emphasize the role of ideological factors in the government response to COVID-19. A bold attempt is made in the concluding chapter to model government strategies for managing the emergency of the pandemic and the consequences for trajectories of infection and mortality. As the editors argue, the principles of "good governance" are of relevance to countries everywhere. There was evidence of them in action on the COVID-19 pandemic all over the world, in a wide range of institutional settings. COVID-19 experiences have a lot to teach us about the governance capabilities that will be needed when future emergency situations occur, emergencies that might be created by pandemics or climate change, or various other global risks. Governments will need to be agile, able to learn in real time, good at evaluating evidence in fast changing and complex situations, and good at facilitating coordination across the whole-of-government and in partnership with citizens and the private sector.Paul Joyce is an Associate at the Institute of Local Government Studies, University of Birmingham, Visiting Professor at Leeds University, and Director of Publications at IIASFabienne Maron is Guest Lecturer at Université de Reims Champagne Ardenne (URCA) and Scientific Director at IIAS.Purshottama Sivanarain Reddy is Senior Professor at University of KwaZulu-Natal, Vice-President for Programmes of IASIA and Chairperson of the Scientific Committee (PRAC) of IIAS.The International Institute of Administrative Sciences (IIAS) is a learned society in public administration established in 1930 and headquartered in Brussels. The Public Governance Series aims at diffusing the scientific knowledge it produces.