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 Covid‐19 – 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 Hoffmeyer‐Zlotnik). 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.)
Second, the contributions delve into the far‐reaching implications of the pandemic and the political handling of the crisis. They show that the crisis percolates on broader processes that are crucial for democratic policy‐making, such as citizens’ engagement and mobilization, ideological polarization and extremism, and the evolution of political trust. Although pre‐existing patterns of political and civic engagement largely persisted during the crisis, crisis‐related threat perceptions have further triggered mobilization in the early phase of the pandemic and the crisis created specific mobilization potential for extremist political forces (Borbáth et al.). Voters’ perceptions of the government’s competence in handling public health and the economy during the crisis is influenced by political ideology (Vlandas and Klymak); the latter is negligible, however, for explaining the spread of Covid‐19 related conspiracy beliefs and skepticism (Gemenis). Negative emotions such as fear and anger crucially affect citizens’ trust in their governments, but play out in very different ways, leading citizens either to “rally‐around‐the‐flag” or to attribute blame for their situation to the government (Ehrhardt et al.). The crisis also challenges social solidarity. Inter‐group and inter‐generational solidarity is crucial for popular preferences concerning the distribution of vaccines among different social groups (Knotz et al.), but benefits different groups differently. The particular challenges of Covid‐19 for other vulnerable groups such as refugees and migrants whose protection amidst the pandemic hinges on the politicization of their situation, have not yet been met with adequate policy responses (Bohnet and Rüegger). Taken together, these research notes highlight the factors that shape popular attitudes during the pandemic, attitudes which, in turn, crucially inform public policy‐making. Thereby, the contributions provide necessary insight for the design of policy interventions.
Finally, from a methodological point of view, the special issue shows the diverse uses of survey methodology for political research on unfolding crises. In particular, the use of non‐probability online surveys has grown rapidly in social science and policy research over the past decade. Since the outbreak of the Covid‐19 crisis, the popularity of online surveys seems to have further increased – as it is also the case for several contributions in this volume. Such surveys offer a fast and relatively cheap tool for collecting real‐time information about (changing) public perceptions, beliefs, and behavior during a fast‐moving situation. Although the quality of non‐probability online surveys is highly variable, and their widespread use is subject to academic debate, they allow researchers to make a virtue of necessity and possibly to draw inferences that would not be otherwise feasible. Moreover, their low turnaround time offers a decisive advantage, especially in times of crises, when the speed in obtaining new scientific knowledge is particularly important.
To conclude, we shall mention a few remaining blind spots and potential avenues for further research, starting from the need to put the Covid‐19 pandemic in the larger context of the political management of large‐scale crises. In such a context, we observe that democratic systems are under strain as they have to strike the balance between political means and goals that involve trade‐offs and potential dilemmas, e.g., between the effectiveness and legitimacy of policy responses; the safeguard of civil liberties related to freedom of expression and privacy while also complying with the duty of protecting vulnerable groups and curtailing misinformation; the need for nurturing trust in government but allowing for well‐grounded dissenting scientific opinions to inform policy‐making; the prospects for a new division of labor between states and markets; and the need for ensuring cooperation and coordination in multilevel and cross‐sectoral polities that are reshaped by the crisis.