Democracy after Covid: Challenges in Europe and Beyond

This book, one of the first of its kind, explores the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on modern Western democracies from a comparative constitutional law and policy perspective. Through 11 scholarly contributions, it tackles cutting-edge topics for the liberal state, such as emergency legislation, judicial scrutiny of COVID-19 measures, parliamentarism and executive decision-making during the pandemic. The book examines these topics both from a microscopic national constitutional angle, with a focus on European states, and from a macroscopic regional and comparative angle, on par with the American example. The COVID-19 pandemic is thus treated as an international state of emergency that has enabled far-reaching restrictions on essential human rights, such as freedom of movement, freedom of religion or even major political rights, while giving rise to the ‘administrative state.’ This edited volume explores each of these pressing themes in this exceptional context andevaluates different liberal states’ responses to the pandemic. Were these responses reasonable, effective and democratic? Or is the COVID-19 pandemic just the beginning of a new era of global democratic backsliding? How can liberal democracies manage similar crises in future? What lessons have we learned? The institutional knowledge gained turns out to be the key for the future of the rule of law.

Table of Contents:
I. The COVID-19 Pandemic as a State of Exception?.- The Pandemic as an Idiosyncratic Case of a State of Exception.- The COVID-19 Pandemic and the State of Emergency: Lessons from Portugal.- II. Executives and Parliaments in a Pandemic.- Executives during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Contradictory Trends.- Parliamentarism in the Pandemic: Contemporary Challenges.- COVID-19 and the Federal State: The German Experience.- The COVID-19 Pandemic in Cyprus: A problematic legal regime, and the potential of rule of law in emergencies.- III. Balancing and Judicial Scrutiny in a Pandemic.- American Lessons: The COVID-19 Pandemic and the US Supreme Court.- The Rule of Law and Fundamental Rights in the Corona Pandemic in Germany.- The Impact of the Pandemic on the Greek Constitution.- Protecting Political Rights under the Threat of the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Emergence of Strict Judicial Scrutiny in Spain.- IV. Conclusions: Liberal Democracy after COVID-19.- Conclusions: Liberal Democracy after COVID-19: Challenges in Europe and beyond.

About the Author :
Kostas Chrysogonos is Professor of Constitutional Law at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. Anna Tsiftsoglou is a Postdoctoral Fellow in Law at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece.