If COVID-19 can provide us with one lesson, it is that the democratic values that we share can be transformed, even very radically and very quickly: the viral nature of the health crisis basically forced our institutions to prioritise public health over the economy (to varying degrees across different countries). During this crisis, we are all part of the problem and are all included in providing the solution to COVID-19 in a radically direct way.
COVID-19 has given each of us, as potential vectors of the virus, the need to think about what we hold dear in our democratic systems: participation and inclusion, expertise and transparency, legitimacy and efficiency to name but a few of the themes that have been raised in light of COVID-19. We see the fallout from the pandemic as an opportunity to bring forth a debate on these “latent problems”, by discussing alternative strategies for developing our democracies, espousing a genuinely inclusive, and more humane, politics.
