Claiming credit and avoiding blame: political accountability in Greek and Turkish responses to the COVID‐19 crisis

Switzerland responded to the first COVID‐19 wave fairly successfully by employing both public health and economic measures. During the state of emergency, the federal government made a firm decision to flatten the infection curve and to protect especially at‐risk populations. During the lockdown period, the focus of the political debate shifted from health to the economy as the Federal Council (i.e., the national executive) started to prepare for the country's reopening. While government still had full power due to the emergency situation defined under national epidemic law, the shift in the debate also meant a shift in the way that the government made decisions. Switzerland is a power‐sharing consociational democracy with strong neo‐corporatist features. While the executive untypically relied heavily on health experts within and outside the administration during the lockdown, the reopening strategy shows clear features of Swiss neo‐corporatism, including the resurgence and influence of the traditional big economic vested interests over the government's approach to decision making.

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Switzerland's COVID‐19 policy response: Consociational crisis management and neo‐corporatist reopening

Sager

Mavrot

2020

“…Although by this time government communication had been dominated by the pandemic response, no other policymaker than the prime minister emerged as a key decision maker in relation to the crisis. This was in contrast to the practice of a number of liberal democratic governments that placed high-profile civil servants with a technocratic profile or highly esteemed experts in the forefront of government communication on the pandemic (see Colfer, 2020;Zahariadis et al, 2020). This way, elected officials could distance themselves from expert-opinion-based decisions and could limit the political risk of concomitant measures.…”

Section: Crisis Responsementioning

confidence: 99%

Ultra‐orthodoxy and selective voluntarism: How did the Orbán regime react to the first wave of the pandemic?

Ádám

2020

Viktor Orbán's regime in Hungary is a prime example of authoritarian populism in a relatively developed country that has been part of the European Union since 2004. The paper argues that in response to the pandemic, the Orbán government pursued a set of selectively voluntarist policies that have been informed by an ultra-orthodox, state-centered worldview that sought to minimize the regime's democratic accountability and to reduce the counter-mobilization ability of the opposition. These policies had been associated with comparatively low infection and death rates in the first wave of the pandemic, hence enabling high approval ratings for the government despite generating considerable human and economic costs. In light of rising infection and death rates from September 2020, however, it is yet to be seen whether the COVID-19 crisis, in balance, will reinforce or undermine popular support to the regime.

“…Meanwhile in Ireland, technocrats were to the fore, as responsibility for delivering government communications around the pandemic was fulfilled almost exclusively by senior medical advisors, many of whom are now household names, and with the Taoiseach and senior government ministers making only rare set piece interventions throughout the crisis. Zahariadis et al (2020) also review the role of experts under COVID-19, specifically with respect to Greece and Turkey.…”

Section: Risk and Evidencementioning

confidence: 99%

Herd‐immunity across intangible borders: Public policy responses to COVID‐19 in Ireland and the UK

Colfer

2020