Riders on the storm : the politics of disruption in European member states during the COVID-19 pandemic

ANGHEL, Veronica; JONES, Erik

doi:10.1080/21599165.2022.2122045

Riders on the storm : the politics of disruption in European member states during the COVID-19 pandemic

dc.contributor.author	ANGHEL, Veronica
dc.contributor.author	JONES, Erik
dc.date.accessioned	2022-09-15T12:03:38Z
dc.date.embargo	2024-03-14
dc.date.issued	2022
dc.description.abstract	This paper explores how democracies handle the trade-off between public safety and fundamental democratic principles. We show that an exogenous shock, like the pandemic, creates incentives for governing elites to deploy self-empowering mechanisms to avoid institutional checks and balances – with lasting consequences for democratic performance. We examine this prospect in Italy and Romania. These cases have a long history of institutional gridlock; such history reinforces incentives to work around traditional institutions in responding to the pandemic. While the two cases vary in terms of the quality and resilience of their democratic institutions, we find that elites displayed a similar propensity to overlook the intricate institutional balances during a moment of crisis. In Italy, the executive strengthened its power relative to the legislature; in Romania, the strengthening is relative to the judiciary. This finding has implications in assessing the risk for falling standards of liberal democracy across the European Union.	en
dc.embargo.terms	2024-03-14
dc.format.mimetype	application/pdf	en
dc.identifier.citation	East European politics, 2022, Vol. 38, No. 4, pp. 551-570	en
dc.identifier.doi	10.1080/21599165.2022.2122045
dc.identifier.issn	2159-9165
dc.identifier.issn	2159-9173
dc.identifier.uri	https://hdl.handle.net/1814/74869
dc.language.iso	en	en
dc.orcid.putcode	1814/80119:119059813
dc.orcid.putcode	1814/80293:119059815
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dc.publisher	Routledge	en
dc.relation.ispartof	East European politics	en
dc.rights	info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess	en
dc.rights.license	Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International	*
dc.rights.uri	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/	*
dc.title	Riders on the storm : the politics of disruption in European member states during the COVID-19 pandemic	en
dc.type	Article	en
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