ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic had enormous health, economic and political consequences. In this article we argue that, after some initial confusion, the European Commission and European Central Bank, contrary to what had happened with the Euro-zone crisis, have profoundly altered their policies to address the dire consequences of the pandemic. The analysis is predicated around the case of Italy, which was the first country to face the spreading of the virus among its population as well as one of the most seriously hit in both health and economic terms. As underlined below, also the Italian political panorama has been substantially altered by both the crisis and the intervention of the EU in it. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 crisis caused unprecedented disruption in terms of human losses, economic damages, social isolation, and general malaise. It seems that, although the advice of the scientific communities to adopt rigorous measures of track and tracing, mass testing, and lock down was often considered at odds with economic performance, eventually it was precisely that kind of advice that avoided the economic debacle. This article will try and find out the reasons why Italy was more efficient and effective in implementing the measures suggested by national and transnational scientific communities. The article will do so by answering the following questions: (1) What are the political determinants of the different state responses to the pandemic? (2) Why have epistemic communities' receipts to exit the COVID-19 crisis been ignored in some countries to follow a misguided economic logic? (3) Has the state response to the crisis anything to do with the importance of neo-liberalism and neo-liberal forces in the organization of the economy or have populist countries been less efficient than others as suggested in the recent literature on the subject?