As Covid-19 exposes structural flaws in leading democracies and terrifying vulnerabilities elsewhere, it has highlighted a group, comprising hundreds of millions of people, of what might be called an international ‘precariat.’ Citizens with full-time employment who nevertheless live just a paycheck away from financial ruin. As our awareness of their plight has increased, it has underscored the importance and the fragility of traditional national welfare systems. The last two months have transformed public attitudes to the government’s role in strengthening systems that provide some measure of economic and social stability.
The Guardian’s Washington correspondent Julian Borger writes that several of the largest shifts have taken place in countries “where the state’s role in social welfare has been in most rapid retreat.” Some historians argue the experience might even “become a turning point in social history – on a par with the New Deal in the US or the postwar Labour government in the UK.” Certainly both Trump’s and Johnson’s indecisive leadership stands in stark contrast to the selflessness of frontline workers in their respective countries. In fact the heroism of these people has already altered the political landscape. Parties that formerly balked at generous funding for healthcare and other aspects of the welfare state will now find it impossible to maintain their skepticism.
Another revelation has been how strikingly female leaders have outperformed their male counterparts. In Barbados, Denmark, Finland, Norway, New Zealand, Sint Maarten and Taiwan women proved much better at distilling complex information into clear messages and decisive action. Angela Merkel, a former scientist, has been particularly good at this, constantly explaining with detailed clarity how her government assesses and manages risk. Other prominent women, such as Jeong Eun-kyeong, Director of KCDC, South Korea’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, have maintained a steady focus on effective action (“test, trace, contain”) instead of indulging in the martial language so commonplace in the British and American responses.
When treated like adults, the populations of Germany, Taiwan and Korea responded accordingly, and flattened the curve in record time. The repeated failures of the American alternative speak for themselves. While a US team headed by Vice President Mike Pence and the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner dithered throughout February, South Korea quickly began to test between 12,000 and 20,000 people each day, at drive-through and walk-in testing centres. The tests were free, lasted about 10 minutes and results were sent to mobile phones within a day. Within a month of the first recorded Covid-19 case 270,000 Koreans had been tested. The contrast with the bickering incompetence which has derailed similar efforts in the US could not be more striking.
As countries negotiate the end of their lockdowns, governance will matter more than ever. In places like the Philippines, where dismissive early responses were followed by panic, the government’s failings cannot be concealed by its draconian over-reaction. Other countries have clearly used the crisis to further pre-existing political ends. China has arrested pro-democracy activists; in Hungary Viktor Orban is ruling by decree, perhaps indefinitely. But even as authoritarian leaders use xenophobia, or conspiracy theories to deflect the blame for their failures, their citizens will eventually wonder why their state fared so poorly during the crisis. And inevitable comparisons with the countries that met the challenge well make questions of transparency, accountability and political reform more urgent than ever.
