Crisis of Neoliberalism and the COVID-19 Pandemic: Reclaiming the Welfare State

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic that has gripped the world stands unprecedented in living memory. The crisis presented by the COVID-19 pandemic is urgent, massive in impacts, and global in scale. First recorded in Wuhan, China, the virus caught the world unprepared; developed and developing nations are struggling to contain it. While many studies have failed to move beyond the biomedical foundation of the virus, this paper attempts to capture the underlying socio-economic factors of the COVID-19 pandemic in the context of the neoliberal order and its resulting crisis, which saw the dismantling of the post-war welfare state. Against this background, this paper demonstrates how the COVID-19 pandemic exposed the inadequacies of self-regulating market-based solutions. As a way forward, the paper has made a strong case for a return to the welfare state as an alternative to the free market system that has characterised the age of neoliberalism.