Varieties of Democracies in the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

For democratic governments, the COVID-19 pandemic was a nightmare. Measures aiming to halt the spread of the coronavirus, such as contact restrictions, travel bans, lockdowns, curfews, certificate and vaccination requirements were not just inconveniences in everyday life. Some of these measures also led to restrictions on fundamental rights or affected the exercise of political rights that are central to democracy. Decision-making processes were also accelerated and shortened, the separation of powers shifted in favour of the executive, sometimes resulting in a loss of democratic control and accountability. This chapter investigates how different democracies fared in the pandemic and what impact the COVID-19 crisis had on the quality of democracy. The present chapter adds to existing literature by examining the relationship between the quality of democracy and legislative activities involved in policy responses to the pandemic. The analysis first shows that higher quality democracies have a larger share of acts decided by parliament instead of government or the administration. The chapter then zooms into the case of Switzerland, the only democratic country in the world where the electorate were able to vote three times on the COVID-19 legislation. The clear results of the referendums impressively showed the broad support of citizens for the government’s Corona measures—despite the drastic restrictions on individual freedoms that they entailed.

Introduction

For democratic governments, the COVID-19 pandemic was a nightmare. Measures aiming to halt the spread of the coronavirus, such as contact restrictions, travel bans, lockdowns, curfews, certificate and vaccination requirements were not just inconveniences in everyday life. Some of these measures also led to restrictions on fundamental rights or affected the exercise of political rights that are central to democracy. Among the most obvious was the freedom of assembly, that was curtailed by the bans on gatherings adopted by many countries. Campaigning for elections was also made difficult by lockdowns and curfews, which is why some governments decided to postpone elections during the pandemic (see Ehin’s and Talving’s contribution). What is more, the dynamics of the pandemic, sometimes with its rapid waves of contagion, also forced governments to act rapidly. Decision-making processes were accelerated and shortened, the separation of powers shifted in favour of the executive, sometimes resulting in a loss of democratic control and accountability. Many parliaments saw their role in law-making weakened as executives sought to forgo formal checks and balances in the interest of quick responses to the crisis.

Both these aspects—the free exercise of rights and the control of powers—are pillars of liberal democracy. The pandemic turned out to be a stress test for them. How did democracy, how did different democracies fare in the pandemic? What impact did the COVID-19 crisis have on the quality of democracy? Since the outbreak of the pandemic, these questions have been on the agenda of democracy researchers worldwide. The number of studies and publications on the relationships between the pandemic and democracy is therefore very large. The present chapter adds to this field of study by examining the relationship between the quality of democracy and legislative activities involved in policy responses to the pandemic, drawing, among others, on an analysis of the data compiled by the EXCEPTIUS consortium.

The chapter is structured as follows. The next section discusses the role of democracy in policy responses to the pandemic in an internationally comparative perspective. The following section then zooms in on a single case, namely Switzerland, to illustrate this role more particularly. Indeed, the Swiss case is interesting in that this is, until today, the only democracy in the world where a government’s policy response to the pandemic was submitted to a popular vote.¹

The Role of Democracy in Policy Responses to the Corona Pandemic

The Quality of Democracy

When the COVID-19 began to spread around the world in spring 2020, most governments took emergency measures to reduce the number of infections. The initial reaction revealed the first fundamental difference between regime types: dictatorships reacted more quickly and with more drastic measures than democracies (Cheibub et al., 2020). But significant differences were also observed between democratic countries, as the study by Engler et al. (2021) shows, investigating the variety of responses to COVID-19 in Europe during the first wave of the pandemic (see Fig. 5.1). On the one hand, using data from the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker (Hale et al., 2020), their analysis shows that restrictions on individual freedoms were far from the same everywhere. In Europe, during the first wave of the pandemic, there were countries such as Iceland, Sweden or Finland with relatively few binding restrictions, but also those with strict lockdowns, curfews, assembly bans and school closures, such as Serbia, Spain or Italy. On the other hand, there were also differences in the extent to which power was concentrated on the executive in the first wave of the epidemic, as can be shown on the basis of data from the V-Dem project on so-called pandemic backsliding (Edgell et al., 2021). While in most countries of Northern and Western Europe—with the exception of Switzerland (see below)—parliaments continued to meet and were able to control the decisions of their governments, in many countries of Central and Eastern Europe there was an actual disempowerment of parliaments and even, as in Hungary, Serbia or Moldova, restrictions on the freedom of the press.

Fig. 5.1

Restrictions of freedom (left graph), and power concentration in favour of the executive (right graph) in European countries during the first wave of the pandemic. Source: Engler et al. (2021: 1088). Note: The index of restrictions on freedom is based on the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker (Hale et al., 2020), the index of concentration of power on the Pandemic Backsliding Index (Edgell et al., 2021). Both indices show the values for the respective country in comparison to the European average (value 0)

According to Engler et al. (2021), the differences between these countries are only partly attributable to the country-specific threat situation (such as the number of COVID deaths) or resources in the healthcare system (such as the number of intensive care beds). They find that the quality of a country’s democracy—measured by indices taken from the Democracy Barometer project (Bühlmann et al., 2012)—strongly influences the policy responses to the pandemic. The stronger the democracy before the crisis, the fewer individual freedoms were restricted during the crisis, and the less the power of the executive was expanded (Fig. 5.2). Looking at different dimensions of democratic quality, the most important role is played by the protection of fundamental rights and the rule of law: where these are upheld and protected in normal times, governments were reluctant to impose drastic, open-ended and sweeping restrictions during the first wave of the pandemic.

Fig. 5.2

Relationship between quality of democracy and restrictions of freedom (left graph), and power concentration on the executive (right graph) in European countries during the first wave of the Corona pandemic. Source: Engler et al. (2021: 1092)

COVID-19 Legislation and Varieties of Democracy

The EXCEPTIUS database² allows a closer look at the characteristics of the legislative activities behind these policy responses. More precisely, the version 2.0 of the dataset contains information on 1688 legal acts that were decided by national authorities in 24 European countries from mid-January 2020 to July 2021. As shown in Fig. 5.3, the number of legal acts varies strongly across countries, reflecting varying intensity of legislative action.

Fig. 5.3

Total number of legal acts per country, according to deciding authority. Source: EXCEPTIUS, own rendering

Most of those acts were decided by the government alone (89.2% overall), confirming previous evidence that the executive was clearly in the driver’s seat in devising policies in the fight against COVID-19. Nevertheless, parliaments were involved as well, but this varies strongly across countries. On one end of the spectrum, we find countries such as Germany (40% of acts decided by parliament), Austria (32.8%), Norway (31.1%), the United Kingdom (14.3%), Switzerland (13.8%), France (13.5%), Portugal (11.6%) or Luxembourg (11.1%) where this share was above 10%. At the other end of the spectrum, there are a number of countries, where the entirety of the legal acts adopted in the period under study had been decided by the executive alone. This was the case in Croatia, Estonia, Greece as well as the Netherlands. In the remaining countries, the share of pandemic-related legal actors approved by parliament ranges between 1 and 5%. Finally, there are some countries in which a substantial share of legal acts was decided by the public administration (Malta: 49.6%; Sweden: 2.8%; Belgium: 2.4%; Italy: 1.6%, Portugal: 0.9%). In terms of the substantial content of these acts, no clear patterns emerge, meaning that measures of all sorts are found in an act independently from whether it was decided by the government alone or approved by parliament. There is one exception, however: decisions with measures related to the state of emergency as well as the design of crisis governance were more frequently decided by parliament (see Poyet’s contribution to this volume).

These results echo the findings of Engler et al. (2021) suggesting that cross-national variation in the share of acts decided by parliament might be explained by the quality of democracy. Indeed, one can assume that the higher the quality of democracy in a country, the more likely that the parliament—as the primordial representative institution—is involved in legislative activities devising policy responses to COVID-19. To test this hypothesis, we explore the relationship between the share of legal acts with parliamentary involvement and a variety of established measures for the quality of democracy provided by the V-Dem project (Coppedge et al., 2022). The following figures (Figs. 5.4, 5.5 and 5.6) plot the share of legal acts decided by parliament in a country (on the y-axis) against this country’s score on three macro-level indices describing features of democracy at an abstract level (x-axis) on a scale ranging from 0 to 1. First, the V-Dem index of electoral democracy (Fig. 5.4) measures the extent to which the principle of electoral democracy is realised in a country, i.e., making rulers responsive to citizens by electoral competition under circumstances of extensive suffrage. Second, the liberal democracy index (Fig. 5.5) measures the emphasis given to protecting individual and minority rights and against tyranny of the state and tyranny of majority. Third, the participatory democracy index (Fig. 5.6) gauges the extent of active participation of citizens in all processes, electoral and non-electoral.

Fig. 5.4

Quality of electoral democracy and share of legal acts decided by parliament in EXCEPTIUS countries. Sources: V-Dem dataset 12 (Coppedge et al., 2022), EXCEPTIUS database, own rendering

Fig. 5.5

Quality of liberal democracy and share of acts decided by parliaments in EXCEPTIUS countries. Sources: V-Dem dataset 12 (Coppedge et al., 2022), EXCEPTIUS database, own rendering

Fig. 5.6

Quality of participatory democracy and share of acts decided by parliament in EXCEPTIUS countries. Sources: V-Dem dataset 12 (Coppedge et al., 2022), EXCEPTIUS database, own rendering

All three graphs show a positive relationship between the share of legal acts with parliament involvement on the one hand, and the three macro-level indices of democratic quality on the other hand. It appears that this result is driven not only by Central European low-quality democracies such as Hungary, Poland, Romania with low shares of parliament acts, but also by high-quality democracies such as Norway, Germany, Austria with very high shares of parliamentary acts. The overall trend is clear: higher quality democracies have a larger share of acts decided by parliament instead of government or the administration. In this sense, data from the EXCEPTIUS database complements the insights by previous studies: general quality of democracy—however measured—also came to bear in the COVID-19 crisis. High quality democracies were also those with larger shares of COVID-19 legislation legitimised by parliament.

Democracy and the Effectiveness of Measures Against COVID-19

Good democracies, thus, live up to democratic principles even in times of crisis. These findings are fundamentally welcome from a normative democratic perspective. However, when it comes to the goal of effectively combating the pandemic, the question arises as to potentially detrimental effects of democratic quality. Democratic checks and balances, it could be argued, slow down decision-making procedures and thereby hamper a government’s capacity to act and specially to act quickly—which is particularly important in an acute crisis.

The study by Edgell et al. (2021) addresses this question based on a global comparative analysis. They first examine the spread of measures adopted in the fight against COVID-19 that violate democratic standards. By this they mean measures that can be described as “illiberal” (discrimination, denial of inalienable rights, unnecessary violent enforcement of measures) or “autocratic” (indefinite state of emergency, disproportionate restriction of checks and balances, disinformation campaigns), or that prevent the free circulation of information (restriction of media freedom). Their analysis reveals that a great number of countries have indeed violated democratic standards in the fight against COVID-19—this happened in both autocracies and democracies, but to a lesser extent in the latter (Edgell et al., 2021: 5). In a second step, Edgell et al. discuss whether the end, i.e., the most effective possible fight against the pandemic, justifies the means, i.e., the violation of democratic standards. For this purpose, they analyse the correlation between the adoption of such measures and the population-weighted number of COVID-deaths in the period from March to December 2020. However, they find this correlation to be far from statistically significant, even after taking into account a large number of control variables. This result shows, Edgell et al. conclude, “that illiberal and autocratic practices do not play a significant role in reducing COVID-19 deaths, contrary to claims made by actors engaging in such practices” (Edgell et al., 2021: 8). In other words: violating democratic standards is not worth it in epidemiological terms.

It needs to be emphasised, though, that this finding does not mean that the restrictions on individual freedoms imposed were ineffective in the fight against the pandemic. From a democratic point of view, it merely suggests that these measures should be adopted within the existing democratic and constitutional framework. Indeed, effective measures—even if they are of drastic nature—can be taken without violating democratic standards.

Participatory Democracy in the COVID-19 Crisis: A Tale from Switzerland

Switzerland provides an interesting illustration in this context. At the apex of the first pandemic wave in spring 2020, the federal government largely ruled alone. Based on the emergency powers provided for in the Epidemics Act it was competent to decide restrictions on its own—such as the first nationwide lockdown from mid-March to early May 2020. However, it was above all the indefinite interruption of the current parliamentary session on 15 March 2020 that resulted in a comparatively strong concentration of power in the hands of the executive (see also Fig. 5.1) and constituted a violation of democratic standards. Until the resumption of parliamentary business on 4 May 2020, the parliament—constitutionally the supreme power of the nation—was standing by, while the executive ruled the country on the basis of emergency law. Fortunately, Switzerland was spared a repetition of this democratically questionable self-suspension of parliament in the subsequent waves of the pandemic. In June 2020, the federal government ended the “extraordinary situation” and the measures to combat the COVID-19 pandemic were transferred to ordinary law. As part of the legislative process for the COVID-19 Act, these measures were submitted to public consultation as usual and were able to be discussed in detail by the parliament. And, as foreseen by the Swiss constitution, this legislation was also subject to referendum.

As a consequence, Switzerland was the only country in the world in which citizens were called to vote on COVID-19 legislation. This was the case even three times. After it had turned back to work after its self-inflicted pandemic recess, the Swiss parliament intensely debated the first COVID-19 Act and finally approved it in September 2020. The law provided the legal basis for government action to fight the spread of the virus through non-medical public health interventions (i.e., restrictions), but also to mitigate the impacts on the economy and society by providing financial support to businesses and/or individuals. Most importantly, it also defined the procedural rules specifying the implication of various institutions (notably the cantons, the Swiss federate states) prior to governmental decisions. Given the urgency of the situation, the act was declared an urgent federal decree which can enter into force immediately, with the possibility of holding an optional referendum being postponed by one year. Critics of the new law started to collect signatures in order to submit the law to a popular vote. A total of 50,000 signatures would have been necessary for an optional referendum—almost twice as much were collected. The law was put to vote on 13 June 2021, and accepted by a majority of 60.2% of voters.

But even before the June 2021 vote had taken place, the rapidly changing dynamics of the pandemic as well as its impact on society and economy made revisions to the law necessary. In December 2020, parliament debated a first revision, consisting in the specification and expansion of financial compensations provided not only to businesses, but also to sports clubs and cultural institutions. This first revision was largely uncontested. A second revision occurred in March 2021. It not only concerned further specifications regarding financial compensations, but also introduced new regulations regarding quarantine and vaccination, as well as the so-called COVID-certificate (informing on individual vaccination and/or test status), based on and compatible with EU regulations. Opponents to this second revision notably criticised the new quarantine regulations and the COVID-certificate. Again, declared an urgent federal decree by parliament, the revision entered into force immediately, with the possibility to hold a referendum postponed by 12 months. As with the original law, however, opponents successfully collected signatures (roughly 75,000 this time). The popular vote on the revised COVID-19 law was held on 28 November 2021. Turnout was exceptionally high for Swiss standards (65.7%), and the revision was accepted by a majority of 62.01% of the voters.

Approved in two popular votes during the pandemic, Swiss COVID-19 legislation can thus be considered to enjoy a rather high democratic legitimacy. Substantially, it allows for far-reaching measures to effectively combat the pandemic, as is shown by the second nationwide lockdown (from mid-December 2020 to mid-February 2021) which was decided according to the rules specified in the COVID-19 law. Apart from the parliamentary recess in the first lockdown, Swiss democracy has thus basically functioned as foreseen by the constitution during the pandemic. The role of the participatory instruments of referendum democracy, which are known to be strongly developed in Switzerland, is particularly noteworthy. As in numerous other countries, there were persistent demonstrations in Switzerland against the Corona measures of the authorities and numerous movements were founded to organise the protest. The first two successful referendums against the COVID-19 law of 2020 and its second revision of 2021 were mainly a result of the mobilisation by these groups. But in spite of this opposition and mobilisation against governmental measures, voters’ support to the federal legislation even increased from the first (60.2% of yes votes) to the second referendum (62.01%). And this increase in governmental support occurred despite an exceptionally intense and emotional public debate and a voting campaign clearly dominated by the opponents of the law prior to the second referendum (Heidelberger & Bühlmann, 2021). After the second approval of government and parliament’s COVID-19 policy by a majority of the citizens in the second referendum, protests against the measures to combat the pandemic decreased significantly and some of the protest movements disintegrated. The direct-democratic institutions were thus able to demonstrate one of their most important functions in the Swiss political system also during the COVID crisis: the integration of the opposition. Indeed, a classic argument of Swiss political science is that direct democratic institutions in this country contribute to the de-radicalisation of protest movements (Kriesi & Wisler, 1996). The possibility to collect signatures and conduct referendum campaigns to oppose a governmental decision makes opposition actors refrain from throwing stones or storming parliament to express their claims. By channelling protest institutionally, Swiss direct democracy contributes to stabilising the political system.

However, opposition against the Swiss COVID-19 law had not disappeared entirely after the pandemic. Although the government considered the pandemic as requiring no more specific attention in April 2022, parliament again debated the COVID-19 law in December 2022, and decided to extend its validity, in order to be prepared for an eventual pandemic surge. This most recent change of the law was, again, opposable by referendum. In a last effort, the already weakened opposing groups managed to collect the required number of signatures and Switzerland had its third popular vote on the COVID-19 law on 18 June 2023. Again, the law was approved by a majority of the voters (61.9%).

Conclusion

The COVID-19 pandemic forced governments worldwide to take restrictive measures to contain the spread of the virus. Democracies were faced with the additional dilemma of having to weigh different fundamental rights: the protection of life and health on the one hand, and the protection of individual freedoms on the other. Quick action was also required—which put democratic procedures under (time) pressure. Different democracies reacted very differently to the acute crisis situation. In the first wave of the pandemic, strong democracies had difficulties taking drastic measures, while weaker democracies tended to react with above-average severity. Whether a high quality of democracy thus hindered the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic is, however, not yet clear. This question can probably only be answered in retrospect—when the pandemic is over. Nevertheless, based on the available evidence, it can already be stated that the violation of democratic standards is not a prerequisite for effectively combating the pandemic. A democratic approach is therefore not inferior to an autocratic approach.

As the Swiss example after the first pandemic wave shows, effective measures can also be taken within the existing democratic-legal framework. Of course, this framework is put under tension by the crisis situation. Switzerland is the only democratic country in the world where the electorate was able to vote on the COVID-19 legislation. It did so even three times. The clear results of the three votes on the matter impressively showed the broad support of citizens for the previous Corona measures—despite the drastic restrictions on individual freedoms that they entailed.

So far, democracy has passed the COVID-19 stress test. Democracies have demonstrated that they can act appropriately in a crisis. This is an important insight in view of the currently increasingly intense system competition between autocracies and democracies. And it also puts into perspective the increasingly louder calls for an autocratic approach in other crises—such as climate change (Mittiga, 2021). The experience of the COVID crisis suggests that such calls are unwarranted.