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•Crossborder flows of trade, investment, finance, people, data, technology - as opposed to tariff and non-tariff trade barriers, foreign ownership restrictions, restrictions in money flowing in and out of the country, visa requirements. (Pradumna B Rana)

•This is the idea that economic activities are increasingly taking place and being organised in a global rather than national space. (Ohmae)
•A historical process involving a fundamental shift or
transformation in the spatial scale of human social organization that links distant communities and expands the reach of power relations across regions and continents (McGrew)

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How are covid and globalisation related? 

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How are covid and globalisation related? 

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Do we see deglobalisation or a backlash to globalisation?  

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Do we see deglobalisation or a backlash to globalisation?  

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'It means less political, economic and social integration' (lecture slides)

What is driving it?

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What aspects could the different IR theories highlight of the covid-pandemic? 

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What aspects could the different IR theories highlight of the covid-pandemic? 

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Realism
Liberalism
Marxism
Constructivism
Feminism
Postcolonialism

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Fukuyama, “The pandemic and political order” 

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Fukuyama, “The pandemic and political order” 

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- According to Fukuyama, why have some governments performed better than others in response to the pandemic (pp.26-28)?
- Why do you think these factors are important?

- According to Fukuyama, what world order outcomes are possible following the pandemic (pp.28-31)?

- Why is Fukuyama pessimistic (pp.31-32)?
- Do you agree?

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Bouncing back: world politics after the pandemic 

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Bouncing back: world politics after the pandemic 

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- What did you find most important or most interesting when watching this documentary?

- Having watched the documentary, what do you think it spells for globalisation and/or world order?

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Has the world returned to beggar thy neighbour or have we become more cooperative?

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Has the world returned to beggar thy neighbour or have we become more cooperative?

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Is covid a challenge to world order or an opportunity to rebuild it?

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Is covid a challenge to world order or an opportunity to rebuild it?

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Is it the governments task to keep us safe from a virus?

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Examples
Why is it happening?

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To what extent does covid contribute to deglobalisation? 

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To what extent does covid contribute to deglobalisation? 

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- Publicly funded research becomes private intellectual property
- Normal argument that IPR motivate research does not hold, as those holding the IPR did not do most of the research
- Hoarding of vaccines by rich countries, shortage of vaccines elsewhere

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Access to vaccines and the limiting role of intellectual property rights and pharma monopolies

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Rodrik has long argued that what he calls “hyperglobalization”—eliminating essentially all barriers to the movement of goods and money around the world—has succeeded in undermining the ability of countries to govern themselves, and allowed multinational corporations to set the rules for the economy.

https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2019/07/rodrik-trilemma-trade-globalization

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Rodrik’s writing often reminds readers that trade policy and domestic social welfare are two sides of a larger issue. Because trade almost inevitably makes some people better off and some much worse off, states need to maintain robust safety nets, providing for the public’s health care, unemployment, and other needs to protect against hardships resulting from exposure to the global market. “If you want markets to expand, you need governments to do the same,” he wrote in The Globalization Paradox (2011).

https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2019/07/rodrik-trilemma-trade-globalization

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https://on.ft.com/2ZbzkoA

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This is the first part of an FT series analysing how the Covid-19 pandemic has transformed the labour market and changed the way millions of people think about work
Mike, a gregarious ex-rugby player who now burns excess energy by putting in miles on a road bike, is not ready to retire. Yet his job in fintech - which he began in April 2020, a week into the UK's first Covid lockdown - has proved radically different from the one he signed up for.

Working at senior level in business development, he used to enjoy spending days on the road meeting clients. Long stints of wall-to-wall Zoom calls left him stultified yet still buzzing and unable to sleep in the small hours.

"If my children sat at a screen for 10 to 11 hours a day, I'd lock it in a cupboard," says Mike, who asked that his surname not be used. "All the fun has been sucked out of the job".

At the same time, a friend's sudden death with Covid symptoms and his wife's progressing MS condition made him more conscious of mortality. "On your grave, 'Mike worked hard' - it's not one you see," he says. "I want to get some time in my life where I stop and think."

So at the age of 56, he has handed in his notice and is weighing up options ranging from part-time consulting to training as a gardener - one of countless people across the developed world for whom Covid has been a catalyst to reassess their working lives.

FT Series: Where did all the workers go?

Features in this series include:

Part 1 How reduced migration and early retirement have shrunk the workforce

Part 2 The switching generation: US workers quit jobs in record numbers

Part 3 Back to work: French workers resist the post-Covid 'big quit'

Part 4 Pandemic 'she-cession' lingers for working women in emerging markets

Two years of unprecedented upheaval in labour markets has caused millions of people on both sides of the Atlantic to step out of the workforce, whether to avoid infection, recover from illness, cope with school closures, or simply to retire earlier than they might otherwise have chosen. The drop in participation has added to demographic pressures that were building long before the pandemic hit - and have since been exacerbated by the slump in international migration.

This shock to labour supply represents a threat to the global recovery, with many companies forced to turn away business for lack of workers. While companies hoped these problems would be transitory and would ease over the summer after economies reopened, many now worry that the issues may be more deep-seated.

It also creates a dilemma for central banks just as inflationary pressures are rising and financial markets are getting rattled. For the US Federal Reserve in particular, dropouts from the labour market cast doubt on its ability to hit its goal of "maximum employment" while still containing inflation.

Aneta Markowska, chief economist at Jefferies, argues that a "structural decline in labour supply, coupled with unprecedented labour demand . . . will create the tightest labour market conditions in decades". That would keep wage growth high and inflation above the Fed's target, even when supply chains have recovered, forcing the central bank to reframe its maximum employment goal.

Now, with demand surging and labour shortages spreading, many of those who have worked through the pandemic are gaining the confidence to quit their jobs and bargain for higher pay or better conditions elsewhere. But as Nick Bunker, North American research director for the job site Indeed, points out, the so-called Big Quit is mostly about churn within a shrunken pool of existing employees in low-wage sectors where employers used to hire readily from the pool of unemployed.

The crucial question is whether those workers now standing on the sidelines will rejoin the labour force - or whether employers, consumers and policymakers will need to adapt to a world in which labour is scarce. As Jason Furman, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, puts it: "The biggest wild card is not the strength of demand or desire of employers to hire, but the desire of workers to find jobs."

The question is most urgent in the US, where more than 4m workers have left the labour force since the start of the pandemic and the participation rate is still stubbornly 1.7 percentage points below its level in early 2020 - which is the equivalent to more than four million people. Similar pressures are visible in the UK, where the Institute for Employment Studies estimates that, due to a combination of population change and higher economic inactivity, there are now almost a million fewer people in the workforce than there would have been if pre-pandemic trends had continued.

"Labour supply just cannot keep up with labour demand, and the problem appears to be getting worse," said Tony Wilson, director of the IES, adding that inactivity in the UK seemed to be increasingly driven by ill health and early retirement.

In the eurozone, in stark contrast, employment has almost regained its pre-pandemic level and labour force participation has rebounded rapidly - so that in France and Spain it is already higher than it was before the crisis.

Although rising demand is starting to create pressures, there is still a large pool of untapped labour in the bloc, with participation lagging in Italy, and many countries suffering from structurally high youth unemployment - the legacy of the 2008 crisis. The EU has seen no wave of early retirements during the pandemic because in many countries this is already the norm.

But Claus Vistesen, at the consultancy Pantheon Macroeconomics, says investors are now "hoping that this deficit can be turned into potential", especially in Italy, where Mario Draghi is pressing for pension reforms.

Meanwhile Philip Lowe, governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia, argued last week that inflation could be less problematic there than in the US, because labour participation was returning towards record highs, in common with Japan and other countries in the region, with little pressure on wages.

Recommended

He argued that the difference was due to the high incidence of infection in the US, to school closures and to its policy of channelling income support directly to workers, rather than through schemes that preserved links between businesses and employees. "The result has been a significant shock to labour supply in the US. This has not been the case in Australia," he said.

Yet while the situation differs from one country to another, there are some common themes. One is the role played by migration.

In the UK, while labour shortages predate Brexit, they have undoubtedly been exacerbated by the sudden stop in inflows of EU workers. In the eurozone, labour shortages are most visible in Germany, which previously relied on a steady inflow of migrants to replace an ageing population. Diane Swonk, chief economist at the audit firm Grant Thornton, says the US is now "two million people short of where we should be" due to restrictive immigration policies in place since 2016, even before the pandemic closed borders. "It's very hard to make up the gap in ageing demographics without a major catch-up in immigration," she says.

Another big factor in the US and UK has been a swath of early retirements - a sharp reversal of the pre-pandemic trend for people to stay in work for longer. The Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis estimates that excess retirements - those that would not have happened through natural population ageing - totalled some 2.4m from the start of the pandemic up to August, accounting for more than half of those who left the labour force.

Some older workers will choose to return as health worries subside and financial strains start to build, but many will not.

"The idea was: let's do things while we still can," says Monique Hanis, who retired in July from her role as a communications executive with a clean energy policy firm in Washington DC. Her husband was already retired, but Hanis, aged 60, was still passionate about her job - until the Covid crisis isolated her from colleagues and an unrelated health scare made her long for freedom. Since retiring, she has already received one job offer but has no plans to rejoin the workforce. "There seems to be some demand for experienced people, but I would not go back full time," she says.

In contrast with previous recessions, there are fewer people who feel they have been forced into retirement by a lack of job options, and more who have seen rising asset prices open up choices.

The surge in house prices has made gains in wealth more broad-based, Swonk says, adding: "You can sell, borrow against [property] or trade down into a condo - the ability to do that was absent before. In 2008/09, you would have been underwater."

In the UK, too, some people have found themselves newly able to afford retirement and less able to tolerate working conditions that had worsened due to Covid.

Ken Scott, a 64-year-old HGV driver in Nottinghamshire, says Covid really "sunk it home" how badly drivers were treated, with public toilets and roadside burger vans closed so that "you couldn't even get a hot drink". Supermarkets that had previously kept drivers "in a little room on cheap plastic chairs" while trucks were loaded suddenly demanded that they stayed in their cabs.

He had already scaled back before the pandemic, he says, after a military pension earned from 25 years in the marines kicked in. But he now sees other drivers in what is a former mining area doing the same: many of them had trained and joined the sector at the same time in the late 90s, when the last mines closed, and were now eligible for pensions from their previous careers.

In the US, greater financial freedom is one factor behind the drop in the prime age workforce too. This does not seem to be about the generosity of pandemic-era jobless benefits, which expired in September without any noticeable change in labour force participation. But a survey of unemployed workers by Indeed found that most were not looking for a job with any urgency - and that many of them said this was because they had a cushion of savings, or a partner in work who was earning.

There has also been a drop in the number of Americans holding more than one job - a problem for employers, but a positive trend that suggests rising wages are making it easier to make ends meet.

However, surveys also show that many workers are still deterred by fears over Covid and ongoing difficulties with childcare. Although schools have reopened, they are still disrupted by quarantines and the workers who staff afterschool clubs can now find better pay with Amazon or Walmart.

Janet Yellen, the US Treasury Secretary, argues this means workers will trickle back as concerns over exposure to Covid subside. "When we really get control of the pandemic, I think labour supply will go back to normal," she said in an interview for CBS's Face the Nation programme last week.

Patrick Harker, president of Philadelphia's Federal Reserve Bank, made a similar argument to the Economic Club of New York this month, adding that financial pressures could soon prompt people to return. The end of extra benefits had not yet "nudged" people back into the workforce, but "I do expect that will change eventually, and especially as other forbearance programmes run out," he said.

Joseph Briggs, an economist at Goldman Sachs, says he expects most prime-age missing workers to reappear gradually, but that participation could still be below its pre-pandemic trend at the end of 2022, with higher wealth prompting more early retirements. The surge in popularity of Reddit's Antiwork message board suggests a longer-lasting shift in preferences and lifestyles among some, he adds.

In the UK, while the Bank of England's central forecast is for a recovery in the labour force, it has flagged up the risk of a more persistent fall in participation due to lingering health concerns and long Covid, and to rising numbers retiring early.

The bigger long-term issue, though, is demographics - and recruiters are gearing up for a future in which they will need to do far more to help people on the margins of the labour market into work.

"Will it get better? Probably not . . . In the long term it's the same for every country," says Jacques van den Broek, chief executive of Randstad, a staffing provider with operations across North America and Europe. He argues that companies need to become more open to recruiting and training people who only partly match their criteria, and to tap rural areas where workers are still available.

Neil Carberry, chief executive of the UK's Recruitment & Employment Confederation, thinks the upheaval caused by switching the economy on at speed will soon ease, but that the UK will see both a steady outflow of EU nationals and a much bigger, lasting hit to labour supply as the baby boomer generation reaches retirement.

He adds: "The immediate crisis will pass, but we are looking at a decade of a tighter labour market."
Additional reporting by Taylor Nicole Rogers in New York

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This is the first part of an FT series analysing how the Covid-19 pandemic has transformed the labour market and changed the way millions of people think about work Mike, a gregarious ex-rugby player who now burns excess energy by putting in miles on a road bike, is not ready to retire.

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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-50504151

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The government is spending more on public services than it raises in tax.

To bridge this gap it borrows money, but this has to be paid back - with interest - and that can influence wider tax and spending plans.

Why does the government borrow money?

The government gets most of its income from taxes. For example, workers pay income tax, everyone pays VAT on certain goods and companies pay tax on their profits.

It could, in theory, cover all of its spending from taxes, and in some years that happens.

But if it can't, it will cover the gap by raising taxes, cutting spending or borrowing.

Higher taxes mean people have less money to spend, so businesses make less profit, which can be bad for jobs and wages. Lower profits also mean companies pay less tax.

So, governments often borrow to boost the economy. They also borrow to pay for big projects - such as new railways and roads - which they hope will help the economy.

How does the government borrow money?

The government borrows money by selling financial products called bonds.

A bond is a promise to pay money in the future. Most require the borrower to make regular interest payments over the bond's lifetime.

UK government bonds - known as "gilts" - are normally considered very safe, with little risk the money will not be repaid.

Gilts are mainly bought by financial institutions in the UK and abroad, such as pension funds, investment funds, banks and insurance companies.

How much is the UK government borrowing?

The amount the government borrows varies from month to month.

For instance, when people submit tax returns in January, they often pay a large chunk of their annual tax bill in one go, so the government sees a jump in the amount of money it takes in.

So it is more helpful to look at the whole year, or the year-to-date.

In the 2022-23 financial year, the government borrowed £127.8bn. That was £5bn higher than in the previous year.

The total amount the government owes is called the national debt. It is currently about £2.6 trillion.

That current level is more than double what was seen from the 1980s through to the financial crisis of 2008.

The combination of the financial crash and the Covid pandemic pushed the UK's debt up from those historic lows to its current level.

But in relation to the size of the economy, today's debt figures are still low compared with much of the last century, as shown above, and also compared with some other leading economies.

How much money does the government pay in interest?

The larger the national debt gets, the more interest the government has to pay.

That extra cost was not as big when the interest rates due were low through the 2010s, but it is more noticeable now that interest rates have been rising.

If the government has to set aside more cash for paying its debts, it may mean it has less to spend on the public services which it borrowed to fund in the first place.

The most significant figures tracking the cost of debt are published monthly by the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

According to this data, two months in 2022 saw record levels of money set aside for debt interest: £20bn in June and £18bn in December.

June 2023 saw the third largest monthly amount - £12.8bn.

The most recent October figure revealed interest on government debt was £7.5bn.

During the 2022-23 financial year, the government spent £108bn on debt interest - more than it spent on education.

Why does it matter if governments borrow more?

Some economists fear the government is borrowing too much, at too great a cost.

Others argue extra borrowing helps the economy grow faster - generating more tax revenue in the long run.

In an ageing population, the proportion of people of working age drops, meaning the government takes less in tax while paying out more in pensions.

The OBR says debt could rise to more than 300% of GDP by 2070.

What is the government's plan for debt?

Responding to the OBR report, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt said the government would take "difficult but responsible" decisions on the public finances.

He previously blamed the "twin global emergencies of a pandemic and Putin's war in Ukraine" for driving up government costs.

The chancellor has set a target of getting underlying debt to fall in five years' time.

What is the difference between the government deficit and debt?

The deficit is the gap between the government's income and the amount it spends.

When a government spends less than its income, it has what is known as a surplus.

Debt is the total amount of money owed by the government that has built up over years.

It rises when there is a deficit, and falls in those years when there is a surplus.

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How much money is the UK government borrowing, and does it matter?

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How does government borrowing work, and how and when is the money paid back?

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The myth of globalisation | Peter Alfandary | TEDxAix

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What are the advantages and disadvantages of globalisation?

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What are the advantages and disadvantages of globalisation?

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https://kof.ethz.ch/en/forecasts-and-indicators/indicators/kof-globalisation-index.html

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The KOF Globalisation Index measures the economic, social and political dimensions of globalisation. Globalisation in these fields has been on the rise since the 1970s, receiving a particular boost after the end of the Cold War.

There are debates, if globalisation is at its end. In this video, KOF experts assess the situation.

How to cite the Index

When using the current version of this data, please cite:

Gygli, Savina, Florian Haelg, Niklas Potrafke and Jan-Egbert Sturm (2019): The KOF Globalisation Index - Revisited, Review of International Organizations, 14(3), 543-574 .

Please cite as original contribution introducing the KOF Globalisation Index:

Dreher, Axel (2006): external pageDoes Globalization Affect Growth? Evidence from a new Index of Globalizationcall_made , Applied Economics 38, 10: 1091-1110.

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The KOF Globalisation Index measures the economic, social and political dimensions of globalisation.

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https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2021/04/20/populism-and-covid-19-in-europe-what-we-learned-from-the-first-wave-of-the-pandemic/

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Populist parties are often assumed to benefit electorally from major crises. Yet as Giuliano Bobba and Nicolas Hubé explain, populist actors have found it difficult to politicise the crisis brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic. Drawing on a new book covering the first wave of the pandemic in Europe, they identify several lessons concerning the effect of crises on the electoral appeal of populist parties.

Several authors agree that crisis situations are a precondition for the emergence and success of populists, or at least that they can favour them. While the impact of Covid-19 has not been the same around the world, in many countries the pandemic has been the biggest health, economic and social crisis since World War II.

Given the peculiar nature of the crisis, however, it is not obvious how populists can take advantage of it. Like other catastrophes or natural events, Covid-19 is difficult to politicise, that is, to become an arena for political confrontation between parties with traditional divides (us vs. others; elites vs. people), at least in its early stages.

In a new book, we have brought together contributions covering eight European countries that were affected in different ways by the pandemic (the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Spain and the UK). Our study presents a comprehensive comparison of how populist parties in each of these countries responded to the first wave.
Table 1: Impact of the first wave of Covid-19 infections in selected European countries
Note: The table includes figures from the start of the outbreak until 10 June 2020. Source: European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control

While populists sought to take advantage of the crisis, the impossibility of taking ownership of the Covid-19 issue has made it difficult to exploit the pandemic politically. In particular, populists in power have tried to depoliticise the pandemic, whereas radical right-populists in opposition have tried to politicise the crisis, but have largely failed to gain substantial public support. In what follows, we outline what we have learned so far and what we could expect in the next future.
Populists did not gain support during the pandemic
In terms of political support, as measured by voting intentions, populists have not significantly benefited from the crisis (Table 2). This is evident both in the short term, after the first wave (end of May 2020), and in the medium term (end of March 2021).
Table 2: Voting intentions for populist parties during the Covid-19 pandemic
Source: Politico - Poll of Polls

Although the success of populism is often interpreted as the result of an external crisis (i.e., economic, financial, political, migration, traditional values), this general pattern does not work when applied to the Covid-19 crisis. The peculiar nature of the crisis, as well as the implementation of similar policy solutions across European states, has largely prevented populists from using their usual proposals and rhetoric to gain centrality in the political arena and public support.
Left-wing and right-wing populists reacted differently
Our research found evidence that right-wing and left-wing populist parties reacted in different ways to the crisis. On the one hand, right-wing populism has identified new lines of conflict: an intensified emphasis on nationalism (and neo-natalism), and the (resulting) opposition of 'we, the national people', not only against the EU but also against some other member states. These findings confirm that even during the pandemic, right-wing populism is strictly intertwined with Euroscepticism.

Right-wing populist parties have been prevented from using their traditional appeal to the people as a basis for support and have instead emphasised the handling of migration issues. While in the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Spain and the UK this included requests to close borders to reduce the risk of contagion from abroad, in France and Italy two right-wing populist leaders, Marine Le Pen and Matteo Salvini, accused governments of taking care of migrants instead of focusing only on nationals. On the other hand, left-wing parties (Podemos, La France Insoumise, and to a certain extent the Five Star Movement) did not use this kind of discourse. During the crisis, they were more focused on denouncing the lack of public investment in national health-care systems and the disastrous consequences of years of EU neoliberalism.
Being a populist in power or in opposition matters
Whether populist parties were in power or in opposition appears to have structured their discourse on Covid-19. Opposition parties attempted to politicise the pandemic at the end of the first wave, primarily blaming parties in power for their handling of the crisis, though with only partial success. No populist party attempted to politicise the pandemic in the manner Donald Trump did, by questioning the origin of the virus. The more marginal parties such as the Brexit Party, Vox, the AfD, and Konfederacja, have clearly radicalised their discourse based on nationalist, protectionist, and neo-nationalist agendas.

In contrast, parties aspiring to govern, such as the Rassemblement National, La France Insoumise, and Lega, have been much more cautious, focusing mainly on alleged government incompetence. On the other hand, the governing parties have tried to depoliticise the crisis using technical and scientific arguments and following the recommendations of national experts. For them, the crisis was an excellent opportunity to show their political competence, managerial skills and dedication to the people. A typical case is the Czech Prime Minister, Andrej Babiš, who emphasised his ability to govern the country through the crisis with the same success that he had achieved in managing his businesses in the past.

Again, a difference seems to have emerged between the left-wing and right-wing populists in power. Podemos in Spain and the Five Star Movement in Italy, as members of coalition governments, have based their political action on the advice of scientific and technical committees, while emphasising the need for more public investment in health care. At the opposite end of the spectrum, right-wing populists in power in the Czech Republic, Poland, and Hungary have primarily used scientific arguments to justify their political decisions, emphasising their leader's ability to make informed decisions solely on the basis of the authority of their political leadership.
Populists as 'crisis entrepreneurs'
While populist actors often operate as 'crisis entrepreneurs', most of them have been unable to exploit the pandemic. Evidence suggests that populists benefit more from a situation of continual complaint against new contradictions than from the actual outbreak of a crisis such as Covid-19, or, worse still, from a solution to it, such as Brexit in the case of UKIP.

As crisis entrepreneurs, populist strive to fuel a permanent crisis cycle. This is, in fact, the condition that allows them to take full advantage of crises in terms of political centrality and voter support. Of course, as already mentioned, not all crises are the same. Populists take ownership of the contradictions that best suit their view of society. The quest for this crisis ownership is what feeds the continuous process of naming, blaming, and claiming of systemic contradictions that populists implement as a political strategy.

The pattern typically begins with the emergence of a political contradiction, triggered by populists. The next step is for this contradiction to be publicly recognised as a relevant problem, before being exploited by populist politicians, who then push it toward becoming an actual crisis. Finally, populists do not limit their focus to a single contradiction, but instead trigger this cycle for all contradictions they identify at a given time. The initial phase is when populists can benefit the most from a crisis while in the final phase, the climax, the contradiction finds a solution or a compromise that weakens the issue.

During the pandemic, all political actors suddenly found themselves in the final phase, where a crisis had broken out and a solution had to be found. This is the worst condition for populists because citizens perceive problems as real or experience them directly. Political responses must be rapidly implemented. At these critical junctures, disputes and polarisation often leave room for forms of political collaboration or non-hostile, tacit agreement in the name of national solidarity. However, as soon as this state of emergency ends, populists begin to implement the permanent crisis strategy again, fostering the emergence of new contradictions. This is exactly what happened in the eight countries we analysed between February and May 2020.
From the Covid-19 crisis to multiple crises: a new breeding ground for European populism?
In our view, crises per se do not necessarily favour populism. On the contrary, it is populists who fuel a 'permanent crisis cycle' that consists of a continuous search for 'crisis ownership' around stable or emerging political contradictions. The Covid-19 pandemic is an interesting case where populists were not able to obtain this kind of ownership at an early stage of the crisis. However, the consequences of the management of the pandemic - in health, economic and social terms - are multiplying critical situations that could lead to real crises in the coming months.

As we all know, unfortunately, the health crisis is far from over or under control. Covid-19 has entered the political routine and governments are oscillating between economic, public health, and preventive policy measures. Once in the coming months the first vaccination campaign is over, the situation will evolve to a new standard - far different from the previous one - in which the political struggle will take place and people will have to live. This normalisation of the Covid-19 crisis is likely to give opposition parties more opportunities to politicise the policies implemented by governments and possibly take advantage of the crisis. Populists in power and in opposition, therefore, will face opposite challenges, the outcome of which will determine the characteristics of European populism in the post-Covid-19 age.
For more information, see the authors' accompanying book, Note: This study was conducted within the scope of the H2020 project Democratic Efficacy and the Varieties of Populism in Europe (DEMOS) and was funded by the European Commission under Grant agreement number 822590. The article gives the views of the authors, not the position of EUROPP - European Politics and Policy or the London School of Economics. Populism and the Politicization of the COVID-19 Crisis in Europe (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021)

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Populism and Covid-19 in Europe: What we learned from the first wave of the pandemic

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Populist parties are often assumed to benefit electorally from major crises. Yet as Giuliano Bobba and Nicolas Hubé explain, populist actors have found it difficult to politicise the crisis brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic. Drawing on a new book covering the first wave of the pandemic in Europe, they identify several lessons concerning the effect of crises on the electoral appeal of populist parties.