Varieties of Democracies in the COVID-19 Pandemic

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.