This book seeks to identify the reasons why some countries were more efficient and effective than others in responding to the COVID 19 pandemic, and why the global community failed to coalesce. What are the political determinants of the different state responses to the pandemic? Why was scientific advice rejected or ignored in many countries? What has been the role, respectively, of neoliberalism, populism, and authoritarianism in the making of Covid-19 policy? What role have each of these factors played in the uneven and clearly inadequate global response to the pandemic? In an effort to understand why some states failed to handle the pandemic properly, some of the literature suggests that populism is at the root of the current failure of international co-operation. The global financial crisis of 2008-10 triggered significant cooperation within the G-20, led by the combined efforts of the United States and China. These forms of cooperation have clearly disappeared in the context of the pandemic, not only with respect to economic policy but also in public health and management. The authors of this volume link the different state responses to the pandemic-- from its inception to the start of the vaccination campaign, and to the political regimes prevailing in each. In particular, the present volume focuses on a distinction between the responses of neo-liberal regimes, populist regimes and authoritarian ones.

This book provides a novel in-depth study of the early pandemic response policy at the intersection of political economy and law. It explores: (1) whether the responses to COVID-19 were democratically accountable; (2) the ways in which new surveillance and enforcement techniques were adopted; (3) the new monetary and fiscal policies which were implemented; (4) the ways in which employed and unemployed persons were differently impacted by the new policies; and (5) how companies were economically sustained through the pandemic. A compelling look at what happens to societies when disaster strikes, this book will be of interest to legal scholars, political scientists and economists.

This comprehensive book brings together research published during 2021 analysing the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the economy – on output and employment, on inequality, and on public policy responses. The Covid-19 pandemic has been the greatest public health crisis for a century – since the ‘Spanish Flu’ pandemic of 1919. The economic impact has been equally seismic. While it is too early to measure the full economic cost – since much of this will continue to accumulate for some time to come – it will certainly be one of the greatest global economic shocks of the past century. Some chapters in this edited volume report on specific countries, while some take a comparative look between countries, and others analyse the impact upon the global economy. Even before the Covid-19 pandemic, there had been calls for a ‘great reset’ in face of the climate crisis, the increased income and wealth inequality, and the need to avoid further global financial crisis. With the devastating Covid-19 pandemic – a harbinger for further such pandemics – there is an even greater need for a reset, and for the reset to be that much greater. The chapters in this book were originally published as special issues in the journal International Review of Applied Economics.

The Democratic Education Network (DEN) is a collaborative group involving academicstaff and students that aims to organize and support the educational experience ofstudents at the University of Westminster. DEN has inspired students to engage locallyand globally.Since the outbreak of COVID-19, DEN has played a significant role engaging studentsonline, and aiming to facilitate their learning process. This book is a compilationof papers written by both students at the University of Westminster and its partnerinternational universities. The book brings together different topics and conceptsrelated to the governance and management of the global COVID-19 pandemic. Itanalyses the political, economic, and social impact of COVID-19 on the agendas set bygovernments all around the world. This edition of the book is a manifestation of DEN’scollective teamwork.“I am so pleased to see the hard work of staff and students in the DemocraticEducation Network (DEN) come to fruition in this excellent publication. I recognisethe value of these collaborations in our turbulent times, and it is lovely to see studentsand academic staff from all over the world come together to develop meaningful,apposite, and challenging scholarship. Working in partnership with students is such astrength of the culture at the University of Westminster, and it is great to see this workdemonstrated so effectively in this text

Covid-19 and the Global Political Economy investigates and explores how far and in what ways the Covid-19 pandemic is challenging, restructuring, and perhaps remaking aspects of the global political economy. Since the 1970s, neoliberal capitalism has been the guiding principle of global development: fiscal discipline, privatisations, deregulation, the liberalisation of trade and investment regimes, and lower corporate and wealth taxation. But, after Covid-19, will these trends continue, particularly when states are continuing to struggle with overcoming the pandemic and violating one of neoliberalism’s key principles: balanced budgets? The pandemic has exposed the fragility of the global political economy, and it can be argued that the intensification of global trade, tourism, and finance over the past 30 years has facilitated the spread of infectious diseases such as Covid-19. Therefore, economies in lockdown, jittery markets, and massive government spending have sparked interest in potentially re-evaluating certain features of the global political economy. This volume brings together leading and upcoming critical scholars in international relations and international political economy to provide novel, timely, and innovative research on how the Covid-19 pandemic is impacting (and will continue to impact) the global economy in important dimensions, including state fiscal policy, monetary policy, the accumulation of debt, health and social reproduction, and the future of austerity and the fate of neoliberalism. This book will be of great interest to students, scholars, and experts in international relations and international political economy, as well as history, anthropology, political science, sociology, cultural studies, economics, development studies, and human geography. Chapter 8 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

​This book examines and classifies different reactions to the COVID-19 pandemic from economists across the world. With the impacts of the pandemic experienced differently in each country, specific case studies are provided to highlight how the economics profession has responded to the challenges that have emerged from COVID-19. Key debates, such as the trade-off between health protective measures and the economic impacts of closing important sectors, are discussed, with a focus on the responses in China, the USA, Italy, France, Russia, Argentina, Brazil, India, and Palestine. This book explores the ability of economists to respond to economic and social crises, and provides insight into the ties between economic theory and economic policy in the modern world. It will be relevant to students and researchers interested in how economists have responded to the COVID-19 and what changes it might trigger.

COVID-19 is the most significant global crisis of any of our lifetimes. The numbers have been stupefying, whether of infection and mortality, the scale of public health measures, or the economic consequences of shutdown. Coronavirus Politics identifies key threads in the global comparative discussion that continue to shed light on COVID-19 and shape debates about what it means for scholarship in health and comparative politics. Editors Scott L. Greer, Elizabeth J. King, Elize Massard da Fonseca, and André Peralta-Santos bring together over 30 authors versed in politics and the health issues in order to understand the health policy decisions, the public health interventions, the social policy decisions, their interactions, and the reasons. The book’s coverage is global, with a wide range of key and exemplary countries, and contains a mixture of comparative, thematic, and templated country studies. All go beyond reporting and monitoring to develop explanations that draw on the authors' expertise while engaging in structured conversations across the book.