Crisis and Critique: On Preparedness, Authoritarianism and the Regulatory State

Carlo Caduff

doi:10.1163/25903276-bja10022

Abstract

Abstract The Covid-19 pandemic has been overwhelming in many ways, but what are the structural conditions that can explain the dramatic impact of the global pandemic? How can we shift the horizon of the possible and contribute to another politics of life, one that is based on strong institutions and a vision of social justice? This article examines the role of preparedness, authoritarianism and the regulatory state. It suggests that it is important to move beyond the binary of epidemic and endemic disease and rethink the kinds of crisis publics, forms of political action and medical-historical consciousness that this distinction with its emphasis on dramatic disjunctures enables.

Highlights

– pariss Editors: You published your piece ‘What went wrong: Corona and the world after the full stop’ in July 2020 (Caduff 2020)
Public speech took the form of instructions, accusations and moralizations
As I mentioned in my article, lockdowns entail a distinct class politics and create differential exposures to the disease

Summary

Introduction

– pariss Editors: You published your piece ‘What went wrong: Corona and the world after the full stop’ in July 2020 (Caduff 2020). Jones and Hameiri argue that over the past three decades, ‘government’ was largely “replaced by ‘governance’, whereby resources, authority and responsibility are dispersed to diverse public and private actors, while central state managers retreat to a ‘regulatory’ role, using ‘negative coordination’ to ‘steer’ these actors in broadly favoured directions.” As a result of this process, the state has neither the capacities nor the authority to control the spread of an infectious disease such as Covid-19.

Results

Conclusion