Keywords

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound impact on societies and government systems and is one of the biggest crises facing the globe since the Second World War. It is unlike any economic or social crisis experienced by current generations. Nowadays, the notion of “crisis” is overused and, paradoxically, turned into an object of normalisation (Fassin & Honneth, 2022; Holton, 1987). During times of widespread social, cultural and economic transformations, it has become commonplace to adopt the term, since unforeseeable and abrupt events, unexpected multifaceted shifts and challenging routines in different domains. In these kinds of critical situations, it seems easy to call them a crisis. Without doubt, the COVID-19 pandemic is an example of an event that can be classified as a crisis, as it not only impacted public health but also led to institutional and socio-economic disruptions. It was also a territorial crisis, that is, an unpredictable and profound process of de- and re-territorialisation that has transformed territorial spaces through multifaced, multi-scaling institutional and political strategies of re-bordering and de-bordering, with different and somewhat controversial practical and symbolic appropriations. The COVID-19 pandemic has been one of the most important global territorial crises of modern times. The pandemic interrupted for many months—and subsequently contributed to reshaping—global flows and mobility, which are often taken for granted in contemporary times. The pandemic brought into play the role of territorial states in the fields of security, border control and the economy: a role that unfolded, in the months of the pandemic, in all its power and uncertainties. The pandemic was a worldwide governance crisis that posed a persistent threat to large sectors of the population, leading to quick and political responses under the pressure of time and uncertainty (Lipscy, 2020). For democratic regimes, it was a crucial test on how they work under a stressful challenge (Poiares Maduro & Kahn, 2020).

In this chapter, we focus on some aspects of this crisis, showing how the experience of the pandemic can provide a further field of research for a territorial approach to democratic politics. By highlighting the main decisions in Western countries, we develop some hypotheses for reasoning about the shift brought about by the curb on mobility and lockdown policies, the uncertain role of territorial states, socio-territorial inequalities, the effect of the pandemic on flows and the relationship between supranational, national and subnational institutional powers.

Lockdowns and Re-bordering

In the early phases of the pandemic, the territorial dimensions of the crisis took their apex. In the global world, mobility transcended the division between national and international spaces, between living and working areas and between people and goods. Before the pandemic, global mobility—in particular, the freedom of movement between territories of different states—was seen as an inexorable trend and a symbol of freedom for consumers and citizens. The virus also spread through global networks. In this sense, the pandemic is a product of the globalisation of exchanges and flows of people, as well as the interdependence between territories, ecosystems and economic systems. However, with the advent of the pandemic, human mobility has suddenly become a public problem (Cresswell, 2021). Lockdowns and other measures adopted by a majority of governments worldwide and in Europe aimed at reducing mobility became the main strategy to combat the spread of the virus. With a few exceptions, the main responses to the COVID-19 pandemic represented a complete reversal of the social and public value attributed to mobility in contemporary societies. The virus fundamentally changed the relationship between mobility and settledness.

Since the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States, no other event has had as significant an impact on territorial borders as the COVID-19 pandemic (Lara-Valencia & Laine, 2022). The closure of airports, key symbols of spatial mobility, was unprecedented in geographical extent and duration, disrupting the lives of entire populations around the globe and involving one of the largest forms of territorial re-bordering in recent history. Suddenly, the fluidity of borders for those able to move freely disappeared and was replaced by rigid filters and clear separations that had not been seen in decades. The international transport system had not experienced such a crisis since the Second World War, with a collapse in international passenger travel. Stronger controls were reintroduced upon both arrival at and departure from certain territories. Some countries, like Australia and New Zealand, even prevented arrivals from outside for years. The return of national borders, including within the EU, affected a large number of people who had not encountered such travel obstacles in a long time. In Europe, during the first phase of the pandemic, this resulted in the return of national border controls and the unprecedented suspension of the Schengen Agreement in both duration and extent. For more than a year, citizens faced intermittent restrictions on cross-border mobility.

Proximities and Distance

With the outbreak of the pandemic, flows turned from opportunity into danger. It was through the concentration of people and the density of flows that the virus was able to spread. This is reflected in the abrupt halt of a typical structural phenomenon in today’s societies, namely the daily commuting of people between home and work. Restrictive policies have altered spatial relations for millions of people, preventing them from going to their usual places of work and leisure. A significant proportion of people were forced to stay home for weeks and even months, re-appropriate private and family spaces in a different way and be excluded from professional spaces.

This has, at least in part, led to the emptying of urban centres, which are typical places for professional encounters. The call to stay home has not only given unprecedented importance to spaces of proximity but also minimised spatial mobility and social relations, resulting in the isolation of millions of people. The repercussions of this isolation are still being assessed in terms of psychology, society and politics. With more or less strong forms of mobility restrictions and the use of masks, social ties have been replaced by isolation. The meaning of “place” has evolved, shifting from being a member of the public community to avoiding contact with others to prevent infection. The pandemic has encouraged a principle of purity and the utopia of a free and independent body as a means of immunity and, thus, of biological salvation, identifying social contacts outside a close circle of family and friends as a risk to survival, especially if these contacts come from foreign, invisible or uncontrollable environments. COVID-19 also reinforced the belief that using walls and excluding strangers is an effective solution because the latter are perceived as a threat.

From an economic point of view, the shock of the pandemic has re-opened the issue of the re-territorialisation of production chains, either within national spaces or within macro-regions, such as the European Union, especially in sectors deemed vital. Problems in the transport sector have highlighted the limits of production and supply chains and the relocation logic on which Western economies have been structured, with their strong reliance on Asian markets. However, it would be an exaggeration to claim that the flow of goods, people and capital stopped completely during the pandemic. Individual mobility, especially out-of-work mobility, was effectively reduced, but exchanges and flows of goods and capital did not stop. They were partially reduced (e.g. transoceanic maritime transport), and the flow of goods was partly redefined. Unlike wars or famines, the supply of essential goods and services was not interrupted, at least in the countries of the so-called first world. By contrast, immaterial flows have strengthened in some ways, with the surge in remote work, online trade and distance learning. While the pandemic crisis has represented a major process of de-territorialisation, increasing physical distances between people, at the same time, it has also provided an unprecedented boost to the speed and spread of digital technologies in everyday life. One of the drivers of globalisation in the past few decades, the information technology revolution, emerged strengthened from the pandemic crisis. The same technologies that favoured the narrative of the “flat world” or the “global village” have seen their role further enhanced in an unprecedented situation of restricted flows of people, providing virtual conditions for lockdown that are compatible with at least a partial continuation of economic activities. It is hard to say whether digital meetings can compensate for increased social distance, but not everyone has experienced it in the same way. For digital natives, it is easier to imagine, but for others, the obligation to use technology that they consider to be foreign may increase the uncertainties already inherent in the health, social and economic implications of the pandemic.

Socio-Territorial Inequalities

According to some scholars (Scheidel, 2017), major epidemics and natural disasters, wars, violent revolutions and the collapse of states have all contributed to reducing income, as well as wealth disparities. To some extent, the responses to the COVID-19 pandemic emergency in Europe and the United States have called into question what had until a few months earlier seemed to be strict rules based on the primacy of fighting public deficits. To cope with the drop in consumption, the reduction in production and the employment crisis, states, aided by central banks and other international financial organisations, made available an unprecedented amount of financial support. This entailed exceeding public debt limits in contrast to the constraints that states (under the Maastricht Treaty, among others) had imposed on themselves under the pressure of neo-liberal policies. To some extent, the crisis generated by the COVID-19 pandemic has led to a revival of welfare state policies, with more or less strong redistributive aims, especially in the form of financial aid to many of the sectors most affected by the health and economic crisis. Although social policies were apparently crucial to the effectiveness of public health (Greer et al., 2021: 16–17), the temporary and imperative state intervention was necessary for economic sustainability, and it could not overcome persistent social and territorial inequalities. In fact, while strategies to reduce inequalities require the development of policies based on solidarity between groups and territories, the COVID-19 pandemic has been marked by a global increase in social, gender, racial and territorial inequality, poverty and food insecurity between and mainly within nation-states. While 2020 saw the sharpest increase in the wealth of global billionaires, the pandemic crisis also contributed to shutting down large sectors of the economy (Chancel et al., 2022). In many developing countries, a considerable part of the population has had to choose between reduced mobility and access to income during the first waves of the virus. Almost everywhere, remote work seems to have been a discriminator between more secure or high-value-added employees and less protected workers with manual tasks (Bonacini et al., 2021). The pandemic has revealed significant territorial gaps in health policies. Early studies show that in the United States, African-American and poor communities living in rural or suburban areas were particularly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. This is especially true in places that have fewer health services (Abedi et al., 2021; Dorn et al., 2020). An analysis of 206 regions across 23 European countries reveals that an excessive number of deaths during the first wave of the pandemic were concentrated in a limited number of regions. These regions were the largest and most highly connected, with colder and drier climates, high levels of air pollution and relatively poorly equipped health systems (Rodríguez-Pose & Burlina, 2021).

The Territorial State Under Pressure

According to some observers, the political response to the pandemic has been marked by a logic of improvisation in almost all democratic countries (Bergeron et al., 2020). The crisis generated by the COVID-19 pandemic posed a major challenge to social and political science. Despite the general uncertainty, the dominant policies during the pandemic meant that, in the vast majority of countries, some of the mechanisms on which globalisation itself has been based were called into question, at least in part. One crucial mechanism is the role of the territorial state on a nation-wide scale. Despite the fluidity and contradictory nature of the strategies deployed and in contrast to narratives about the decline of national states, many responses to the pandemic were decided and implemented at the scale of the national state: from lockdowns to border closures, from the distribution of vaccines to people to the management and allocation of financial aid. The importance of the nation-state scale also derives from the variation in responses to the pandemic and its socio-economic consequences, caused by differences in approaches and timing. During the most acute phases of the pandemic, most countries followed specific strategies in terms of pandemic responses. China imposed strict controls and lockdowns, in line with its authoritarian surveillance policies, while Sweden did not adopt immediate containment measures, instead relying on individual responsibility and trust in the government. The United States has relied less on containment than on vaccination plans. In this diversity, we can detect the basic tendencies that distinguish countries with authoritarian or para-authoritarian regimes from democracies and, among these, the importance of the different orientations, including the prevailing ideological ones.

Even where supranational bodies have tried to play a coordinating role, as in the European Union, the role of the nation-wide scale was central. Within the EU, the provisions that have prevailed have mainly been decided and implemented by single states, not least because competence in the field of health is a nation-wide prerogative. Moreover, at the apex of the crisis, the responses to COVID-19 further strengthened the power of national executives over parliamentary institutions. The increased relevance of executives is a long-term trend that the responses to the pandemic have made even more evident (Griglio, 2020). In most countries, especially during the first wave of the pandemic, the narrative of the urgency of pandemic responses provided de facto legitimacy for national governments to make and implement such decisions on a nation-wide scale.

However, the affirmation of the centrality of the national scale with respect to supranational instances does not imply a pure and simple “return” to the (somewhat mythological) sovereignty of nation-states, even in the healthcare sector. The events linked to the supply of vaccines or the recognition of vaccination certificates have shown that individual states have been forced to submit to the choices of pharmaceutical multinationals and seek supranational solutions to defend national interests. Moreover, while the EU has struggled (and failed, to some degree) to coordinate urgent responses to the pandemic, it has also decided to provide the most significant financial support in its history to counterbalance the socio-economic impact of the pandemic. Meanwhile, subnational scales have been crucial in linking with the national scale in policy-making. Even in federalist countries, there has not been a one-size-fits-all solution: Some have adopted highly centralised decision-making by national governments, while others have shared responsibility, at least in the early stages of the pandemic (Hegele & Schnabel, 2021). More importantly, it has become clear, especially after the first wave, that local and regional authorities play a crucial role in implementing nationally decided measures. The effectiveness of national and regional governments in adopting, implementing and monitoring decisions to fight the pandemic has been vital (Rodríguez-Pose & Burlina, 2021). Similarly, the effectiveness of responses to the virus, especially in terms of lockdown and masks, has been strongly tied to the capacity of the central powers of the territorial state to be supported by subnational powers. The tensions between national and local governments, along with the strength of local territorial institutions, have played crucial roles in COVID-19 policy-making (Ren, 2020). Unsurprisingly, in the absence or near absence of coordination between states, national governments took unprecedented decisions that effectively bypassed their parliaments and local powers. In subsequent phases, especially since the autumn of 2020, many national governments (e.g. Italy and Germany) have been under pressure to renegotiate a semblance of dialogue between institutions, in particular with regional and local powers, regarding decisions on restrictive and closure measures and financial aid. This is to maintain the popular legitimacy of governments following the increase in social demands triggered by both the health and the socio-economic crisis, as well as the check-and-balance logic within the multi-scalar democratic territorial state.

Pandemic as Politicisation

The persistent uncertainty surrounding the different waves of the virus and institutional-political responses to the pandemic has had two main consequences. First, this uncertainty has hindered the resolution of the enormous health and socio-economic challenges facing governments. The decision-making about and the implementation and legitimation of health issues overlapped with the socio-economic crisis. Second, ideological controversies and politicisation emerged regarding the role of experts, decisions on lockdowns and loosening measures, financial aid to the economy and labour market, the supply, quality and timing of vaccine distribution and the role of multinational pharmaceutical companies. More generally, uncertainty over the pandemic and the effectiveness of policy responses have provided ample opportunity for the politicisation of health, science, economics and borders. These issues have highlighted two potential new political divides: the opposition between those who prioritise health care and those who prioritise economic interests and the socio-economic consequences of the crisis; and the opposition between those who trust science and experts to guide political decisions and those who express scepticism towards them.

To a large extent, ideological and political controversies around policy measures have been context-dependent. In some countries and situations, the narrative of urgency prevailed, with extreme forms of media dramatisation, while in others, denialism was at its apex, as seen in Brazil, the United States during the Trump presidency and the United Kingdom during the early months of the pandemic. Trivialisation, denialism and scepticism towards medical authorities and their recommendations also became a way of criticising the political and scientific establishment. Meanwhile, conspiracy theories about the origin of the virus and its instrumental use as a geopolitical weapon by the Chinese regime against Western countries gained wide visibility and prominence, so much so that they became part of the repertoire of social and political protest. This has led to countless street demonstrations by more or less spontaneous movements and groups against the restrictive measures and vaccination campaigns of governments.

Political parties and leaders, especially those in opposition, have used the issue of the adequacy of responses to the pandemic as an opportunity to gain support from the public and at the ballot box. Among the main protagonists politicising the issue have been the parties and leaders of the so-called populist radical right (Bobba & Hubé, 2021). Many of them have responded to the pandemic through protests aimed at closing borders and by expressing hostility against immigrants, whom they scapegoat for the spread of the virus and as a threat to the welfare, or by criticising the EU or the WHO for undermining national sovereignty or making it less effective to safeguard the health of their country’s citizens. In many cases, these parties opposed closures and restrictions by calling for faster re-openings or less restrictive lockdowns in the name of freedom and the economy and by echoing conspiracy theories directed at experts and the political establishment. Sometimes they have used the flexibility of populist discourse to position themselves as defenders of freedom and individual rights against excessive state power in the protection of health; in other cases, however, they demand firmer closures and criticise the governments’ weakness and uncertainty. Controversies also stem from the persistent polarisation between neoliberalism and state interventionism, which involves various forms of protectionism and nationalism, as well as social distrust fuelled by the principle of exclusionary immunity. This principle, which was prevalent during the pandemic, involves erecting protective borders as a defensive and offensive measure against any external element hypothetically capable of threatening it.

Beyond the Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic is one of the most important global crises of the past few decades. However, the pandemic was not just a historical turning point but also a form of radicalisation of existing trends. Regarding the rule of law and human rights, the pandemic accelerated pre-existing trends and exposed the true character of both authoritarian and democratic regimes (Grogan & Donald, 2022: 474). In some regions of the world, including Europe, a revival of the welfare state has taken place, although public aid and financing have not managed to reduce social inequalities across and among countries (Ryan & Nanda, 2022). The pandemic has also been a period of radicalisation for existing surveillance policies and the strengthening of borders between nation-states (Lara-Valencia & Laine, 2022). The pandemic has given rise to some persistent ideological-political controversies in democratic politics, including nationalism and populism, as well as conspiracies targeting the political establishment and global powers.

Meanwhile, as a global form of territorial crisis, lockdown and distancing measures represented a strong shift. The pandemic—and, above all, its responses, which evolved over many months—challenged established habits and rules, imparting new strategies of de- and re-territorialisation. Taken as a whole, the pandemic has not called into question the multi-scalarity of decision-making processes as such, but it has profoundly challenged them. In some ways, it has shown how relationships are anything but taken for granted and how decision-making power is shared between different scales of power. In the medium and long term, it is not clear whether territorialities will continue to transform, as their persistent fluidity (Murphy, 2022). After the apex of the health crisis, the transnational mobility of people has gradually been restored; however, it is uncertain whether it will reach the same level of transcontinental population movements as before the pandemic. Furthermore, it is not easy to predict how the emergency public policies adopted during the acute phases of the pandemic will more or less permanently influence the basic orientations of social, health and economic policies in the various macro-regions of the world and individual countries and micro-regions. Similarly, in terms of economic policies, it will be important to understand the extent to which Keynesian economic–inspired policies and changes to international trade and production chains will lead to a lasting period of counter-globalisation.

In any event, it is important to note how the greatest global crisis of recent decades cannot be fully understood without a territorial approach, which means delving into the continuities and transformations affecting individuals, social groups, political actors and public institutions. The fundamental redefinition of territorial strategies and forms of appropriation at both the individual and the collective level, as well as the centrality of population and border control as subjects of public policy and controversy, are all aspects that will have to be investigated in depth to understand the greatest global crisis of recent decades, which may very well be the first real global crisis in the history of the planet.