Global Covid-19 Policy Response Between Law and Political Economy

This chapter provides a short overview of the Global Responses to Covid-19: A Law and Economics Comparative project which precipitated this collection of essays; and attempts an initial cross-jurisdictional synthesis of the findings of the project. In the Global Responses to Covid-19 project we considered the regulatory arrangements adopted by over 40 countries in addressing the pandemic under the following thematic areas: (1) state of exception; (2) surveillance and compliance; (3) legal-financial architecture; (4) financial relief for labour; and (5) financial relief for business. The premise of this collection of essays is that prior to the pandemic the mainstream trajectory in economic policy was defined by either a jurisdiction specific neoliberal trajectory, or, in some instances, a more “statist” approach. We questioned, in light of pre-existing regulatory arrangements, what can be said of the initial phase of the Covid-19 pandemic in the global context? We show that three themes seem to be common across jurisdictions: the deepening of existing inequalities; a general economic downturn; and political tensions; and noted that the differences between jurisdictions can be attributed, in part, to whether the previous policy trajectory had been reinforced or broken with. We conclude that future research is needed to further compare examples of these three different tendencies.