The Governance of COVID-19: Anthropogenic Risk, Evolutionary Learning, and the Future of the Social State

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Main author: Deakin, Simon
Other authors: Meng, Gaofeng
Format: Monographs and Working Papers           
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id eprints-36202
recordtype eprints
institution SOAS, University of London
collection SOAS Research Online
language English
language_search English
topic H Social Sciences (General)
JA Political science (General)
K Law (General)
A General Works
H Social Sciences
J Political Science
K Law
description We consider the implications of the COVID-19 crisis for the theory and practice of governance. We define ‘governance’ as the process through which, in the case of a given entity or polity, resources are allocated, decisions made and policies implemented, with a view to ensuring the effectiveness of its operations in the face of risks in its environment. Core to this, we argue, is the organisation of knowledge through public institutions, including the legal system. COVID-19 poses a particular type of ‘anthropogenic’ risk which arises when organised human activity triggers feedback effects from the natural environment. As such it requires the concerted mobilisation of knowledge and a directed response from governments and international agencies. In this context, neoliberal theories and practices, which emphasise the self-adjusting properties of systems of governance in response to external shocks, are going to be put to the test. In states’ varied responses to COVID-19 to date it is already possible to observe some trends. One of them is the widespread mischaracterisation of the measures taken to address the epidemic at the point of its emergence in the Chinese city of Wuhan in January and February 2020. Public health measures of this kind, rather than constituting a ‘state of exception’ in which legality is set aside, are informed by practices which originated in the welfare or social states of industrialised countries, and which were successful in achieving a ‘mortality revolution’ in the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Relearning this history would seem to be essential for the future control of pandemics and other Anthropogenic risks.
format Monographs and Working Papers
author Deakin, Simon
author_facet Deakin, Simon
Meng, Gaofeng
authorStr Deakin, Simon
author_letter Deakin, Simon
author2 Meng, Gaofeng
author2Str Meng, Gaofeng
title The Governance of COVID-19: Anthropogenic Risk, Evolutionary Learning, and the Future of the Social State
publisher Centre for Business Research, University of Cambridge Working Paper no. 524
publishDate 2021
url https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/36202/

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