Ten thoughts on Covid and World Politics (see thread). @POLSISEngage @UQ_POLSIS_Grads @soaspolitics @IAJournal_CH

1. The virus is a quintessential material phenomenon, but its varied effects in different countries bear out Marshall Sahlins’ crucial observation that ‘material effects depend on their cultural encompassment’.

2. Strong states, robust public health systems, and the coherent and transparent flow of information matter. States with weak institutions, entrenched political polarization, run down and inequitable public health systems, and contested knowledge do poorly.

3. Rich countries don’t always do well, or poor countries badly. Again, strong, functioning political institutions matter. The Indian state of Kerala, with a population of 35 million, has kept cases to 666 and deaths to 4.

4.. Authoritarian states, like China, can do well, at least in short term, but only through brutal coercion, war-like mobilization of state resources, and the strict control, but not transparent flow, of information.

5. Inter-state collaboration and coordination is desperately needed, but has been weak and fragmented to the point of non-existent. This is partly because of the weakness of dedicated institutions like the WHO, but its roots are deeper.

6. It is the product of the gulf between government declarations in support of the ‘rules-based order’ and any genuine sense that institutions are needed to solve collaboration problems and deliver public goods, and that institutions require political and economic investment.

7. It is also the product of a lack of leadership. Hegemony is nowhere to be seen, middle powers are AWOL, and the Covid crisis, like the climate emergency, is a distinct kind of cooperation problem: actors must shoulder special responsibilities but without any special rights.

8. Global inequality is a grim reaper. The virus doesn’t discriminate between bodies, but we do: the poorest neighbourhoods and poorest regions are the hardest hit, from Mumbai to Singapore and Montreal.

9. As observed, the crisis is deeply gendered. Not only have the personal and social costs fallen disproportionately on women’s shoulders, the narcissistic machismo of the world’s far-right leaders, from Trump to Bolsonaro, has wrecked havoc on their societies.

10. How and when states learn has emerged as a key question. Some states have learned that massive economic stimulus is needed to save economies, but will they learn that the neoliberal decimation of health and welfare systems has left societies dangerously exposed.