The governance shock doctrine: Civic space in the pandemic

Motivation Emergencies heighten societies' need to be governed. Accordingly, the COVID‐19 pandemic put systems of public governance under severe pressure across the globe. Civic freedoms were widely curtailed for public health reasons. Scarce resources needed to be allocated swiftly, with little opportunity for debate. Purpose In settings characterized by authoritarianism, violent conflict, and restricted civic space, relations between governments, civil society, and citizens at best tend to be fragile and fraught even in “normal” times. What happens when these settings are rocked by a profound shock such as the onset of a global pandemic? Methods and approach This article is based on research on civic space and civic action shortly after the onset of the pandemic in three such settings—Mozambique, Nigeria, and Pakistan. Civil society advocates in each country tracked and interpreted events in real time, debated their responses, supplemented their own knowledge through key informant interviews, and compared experiences across countries. Findings I argue that the three governments' responses to the COVID‐19 pandemic constitute a “governance shock doctrine,” based on the premise that shocks bring responses from the powerful that advance certain agendas. This patterned phenomenon, visible across the three countries, consists of “securitization” of the public health emergency, suppression of dissent, extension and centralization of executive powers, curtailment of press freedoms, and tightened regulation of civic space, including online space. Civic activism navigated or combated these attacks in various ways. Policy implications Measures adopted in emergency situations tend to persist, threatening to lock civil society into living with pandemic‐era restrictions. Preventing this should be a global priority, and especially important where authoritarianism already looms. An energetic mobilization among national and international actors to reassert and protect civic space is needed if the erosion of civil liberties and normalization of autocratic governance wrought by the political‐military apparatus in so many countries during the COVID‐19 pandemic is not to become permanent, and if the inspired and progressive innovations in organic civic activism over the 2020–2021 crisis period are to survive and flourish.