Living in a Democracy as a Fallen People: A REVIEW ESSAY

Rather, it would be more correct to say that Donald Trump found a ready audience for nationalism and postliberal thinking in the United States and rode a seemingly unlikely wave into the White House by semi-miraculously navigating the twists and turns of the Electoral College. COVID-19, of course, has proved to be a breeding ground of predominantly right-wing conspiracy theories, including regarding vaccines even though they were the result of a Trump-led program. [...]he made an argument that Vice President Mike Pence would be able to refuse to certify the election results. Tocqueville approached democracy as a young aristocrat from a family that had suffered in the French Revolution.

Drawing matters

As the faculties of literacy and numeracy are universally recognized as worthy of pedagogical nurturing, so this article champions an older, graphic articulacy: visualcy. An articulacy with the language of drawing that distinguishes the visual arts from other disciplines. Its nurturing has been compromised by the shift away from teaching drawing in UK secondary schools and HE art schools, even before COVID. We argue that this shift is in part a consequence - perhaps unintended - of the neo-liberal values permeating the UK education sector. The article presents a critique of the those values seen as a significant obstacle to drawing's educational benefits, and offers an optimistic basis for its place in the curriculum.

City, cholera, and COVID: A reading mediated by religiosity and science.

On its way to liberalism and, above all, in relation to the difficulties that characterized this moment, the 19th century was fundamental in the configuration of the societies of Mexican cities and, in particular, of peripheral neighborhoods. This process is discussed in this article from a phenomenological and hermeneutic position and with ethnographic and historiographic tools. It considers the cases of the vice-royal neighborhoods of Analco and La Luz in the baroque city of Puebla. Historical factors are described that shaped its processes during a public health emergency. It is shown that the everyday life of its inhabitants had a dual character, mediated by religiosity and science. Thus, the streets functioned and still do function as the neighborhood center, the symbolic site of this syncretism and the site for neighborhood tactics in the protective search for a sense of identity. Also, the eventual and the permanent are found in the streets, where space becomes where one is and lives, as the symbol of attachment and belonging. The relevance of the text lies in the fact that it offers a privileged testimonial position for understanding what was done and what was understood during a disruptive event like COVID-19 from a social and collective lens. In addition, this text contributes to documenting the origin of new elements that add to existing immaterial heritage. (English) [ FROM AUTHOR] Por el tránsito al liberalismo, pero sobre todo por la actuación ante las calamidades que caracterizaron al siglo XIX, este resultó determinante en la configuración de las sociedades de las urbes mexicanas y en particular de sus barrios periféricos. Desde una postura fenomenológica-hermenéutica, y con herramientas tanto etnográficas como historiográficas, en este artículo se discute sobre ello. Tomando como referentes los barrios virreinales de Analco y La Luz, en la barroca ciudad de Puebla, se descubre los elementos históricos que condicionan su proceder ante una emergencia sanitaria. Se muestra también que la cotidianidad de sus habitantes tuvo un carácter dual, puesto que estaba mediada por la religiosidad y la ciencia. Así, la calle funcionaba y funciona como centralidad barrial, lugar simbólico de este sincretismo y sitio para las tácticas vecinales en la búsqueda protectora de su sentido identitario. También en la calle se encuentran lo eventual y lo permanente;deviene espacio donde se es y se habita, símbolo del arraigo y la pertenencia. La relevancia del texto estriba en que se está ante la inmejorable posición testimonial para comprender lo que se realizó y lo que significó, desde la óptica social o colectiva, un evento disruptivo como la covid-19;asimismo, este texto contribuye a documentar el origen de nuevos elementos que se suman al patrimonio inmaterial existente. (Spanish) [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Íconos. Revista de Ciencias Sociales is the property of FLACSO Ecuador (Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)

The Techno-Theodicy: How Technology Became the New Religion

This essay addresses the rise of what is understood to be a global techno-theodicy. Recognizing the pandemic of 2020 as representing the first crisis of the post-liberal order, it maps out the changing nature of religious power as it relates to the appropriation of the , from earlier claims on the monotheistic God to the powers of salvation and redemption invested in technology today. Technology in these terms is no longer seen as enabling, let alone a tool for advancing or progressing the lived conditions of life on earth. Nor can it further be seen as an integral force that shapes being in the world alone. It's now presented to us as the only thing which could save a fragile and broken humanity from itself. This has been achieved by collapsing the human into the species, collapsing the species into nature, and collapsing nature into the technological in such a way that there remains no distinction. This results in an outright assault on the poetic sensibility and the art of possibility. Moreover, it also reaches further into the philosophy of death and the remaining frontiers yet to be colonized.

Economic policy debates in France since COVID-19: A lasting shift in macron's doctrine?

The chapter discusses the economic policies that have been implemented in France to respond to the COVID-19 crisis. By examining some emerging contradictions within interventionist policies, we will argue that doctrines about state intervention took a 180-degree turn during the crisis. The first section contains an overview of the main economic trends in the French economy. The second discusses the COVID-19 pandemic in the context of instability and unrest in France. A discussion confronting orthodox and heterodox approaches to the main economic and social measures implemented, and the reasons for these, is offered here. Despite the shift in the Macron doctrine observed during the pandemic, the economic and environmental issues still seem to us to be insufficiently taken into account. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.

Individual Empowerment, Institutional Confidence, and Vaccination Rates in Cross-National Perspective, 1995 to 2018

In the past decade, before the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, rates of childhood vaccination against diseases such as measles, diphtheria, pertussis, and tetanus declined worldwide. An extensive literature examines the correlates and motives of vaccine hesitancy—the reluctance or refusal to vaccinate despite the availability of vaccines—among individuals, but little macrosociological theory or research seeks to explain changes in country-level vaccine uptake in global and comparative perspective. Drawing on existing research on vaccine hesitancy and recent developments in world society theory, we link cross-national variation in vaccination rates to two global cultural processes: the dramatic empowerment of individuals and declining confidence in liberal institutions. Both processes, we argue, emerged endogenously in liberal world culture, instigated by the neoliberal turn of the 1980s and 1990s. Fixed- and random-effects panel regression analyses of data for 80 countries between 1995 and 2018 support our claim that individualism and lack of institutional confidence contributed to the global decline in vaccination rates. We also find that individualism is itself partly responsible for declining institutional confidence. Our framework of world-cultural change might be extended to help make sense of recent post-liberal challenges in other domains. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of American Sociological Review is the property of Sage Publications Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)

A Social Work and Social Development Perspective on the Need to Decolonise African Economies in Light of the COVID-19 Pandemic: Lessons for Africa

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the world more than any other crisis in the twentieth century. Although the pandemic is global, countries in Africa have been left more vulnerable and exposed. The structural and institutional economic deficiencies that characterise the continent have been laid bare. The health fatalities have been minimal, but millions of people in Sub-Saharan Africa face an even more lethal ‘poverty virus.' The greatest lesson from the current pandemic for Africa centres not only on the need for better preparedness in anticipating future potential disasters, but in building socioeconomic systems that can withstand major shocks such as the current one. This crisis has demonstrated an urgent need for African countries to rethink the neo-liberal economic trajectories currently obtaining. The total collapse of the global village mantra because of shutdowns has exposed the dangers of blindly subscribing to the neo-liberal hegemony for many African countries. The pandemic has exposed how Africa remains the most socially and economically vulnerable continent within the global arrangements of capitalism through the exploitative umbilical code of globalisation. Drawing on a social work and a social development perspective, this chapter discusses the critical lessons that African countries should derive from the COVID-19 pandemic to build resilient and people-centred economies that guarantee social protection and secure livelihoods for the most vulnerable. The author posits that a strategic delink from the current global socioeconomic and political order is necessary. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.

Will the covid-19 pandemic be an opportunity to implement the principle of sustainable development?

An aggressive pandemic is shaking up the certainties of a globalized world and already voices are being raised to announce major changes for the future. In the early 1990s, it was difficult to imagine that the triumph of liberalism over communism would undermine the foundations of a political system based on the rule of law and protection of the weak. However, under the pressure of the economic crisis caused by Covid-19, States are called upon to play an essential role as economic and social shock absorbers. The principles of sustainable development go beyond the issue of individual freedom, which is already enshrined in our constitutions, because they aim to preserve the resources essential to survival. In a Europe made up of empires and kingdoms, the French Revolution inaugurated the nation-state, whose political system was the Republic, which guaranteed the rights not of subjects but of citizens. © ISTE Ltd 2022.

The Transformation of the US's Hegemonic Paradigm: From Embedded Liberalism to Disembedded Financial Liberalism 1

Amerika'nın Íkinci Dünya Savaşı'ndan bu yana dünya çapında hakim bir güç olarak ortaya çıkışı, bazı tarihsel tecrübeler ışıǧında incelenmesi gereken bir konudur. Íkinci Dünya Savaşı'nın ardından ABD dünyanın çöken uluslararası para ve finans sistemini yeniden kurmuş, böylelikle lider pozisyonda olacaǧı uluslararası kapitalist sistemi oluşturmuştur. Gömülü liberalizm, ekonomik, politik ve kurumsal bir örgütlenme stratejisi olarak ABD hegemonyasını saǧlamlaştırarak istikrarlı bir hale getirmiş, uluslararası sistemde ABD'nin başrol oynadıǧı bir küresel ekonominin somutlaşmasının koşullarını yaratmıştır. 1970'lerin ortalarından itibaren ise-neoliberal politikalara geçişin doǧal bir sonucu olarak, dünya ekonomisinin finans kapital ile karakterize bir birikim rejimine entegrasyonunun ardından, parçalanmış finansal liberalizmin ABD hegemonyasının devamlılıǧını saǧlayacak yeni bir strateji olarak etkisini göstermeye başladıǧı anlaşılmıştır. Çalışma, ABD hegemonyasının ortaya çıkışından günümüze kadar uzanan zaman diliminde, ABD'nin hegemonik stratejisinde meydana gelen deǧişimi açıklama sorunsalından hareket etmiştir. Bu sorunsal baǧlamında, ABD hegemonik stratejisinin gömülü liberalizmden parçalanmış finansal liberalizme kayışı ve bu kayışı belirleyen temel dinamikler tarihsel perspektif ekseninde irdelenmiştir.Alternate :The emergence of the United States (US) as the worldwide dominant power is an affair that needs to be investigated in light of some historical experiences. Afterward the Second World War, the US reestablished the world's deteriorating international monetary and financial system. Embedded liberalism reinforced and stabilized the US hegemony (as the form of economic, political, and institutional organization) by generating the requirements for consolidating the global economy in which the US takes a leading role. From the mid-1970s, after integrating the world economy into an accumulation regime characterized by finance capital-as, a natural consequence of the transition to neoliberal policies-it was understood that fragmented financial liberalism began to show its effect as a new strategy that would ensure the continuity of the US hegemony. The study has departed from the problematic of elucidating the change in the hegemonic strategy of the US from its birth to the present day. In this problematic context, the shift of the US hegemonic strategy from embedded liberalism to disembedded financial liberalism and the central dynamics determining this shift is examined in the axis of historical perspective.

The politics of civil society narratives in contestation between liberalism and nationalism in authoritarian Vietnam

The liberal-dominated civil society theory tends to obscure the dynamics and intricacy of state-society relations in authoritarian contexts. Existing accounts on Vietnam have not cast adequate light onto the struggles of ideology and positions between the state and civil society. Drawing on the most recent data from social media in Vietnam, the article contributes a new analytical approach to understanding state-society relations by offering granular insights into the contrasting but mutually reinforcing narratives adopted by the state and civil society actors. In particular, the article steers attention towards the opportunities that crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic have provided for ideological struggles and legitimacy building between these actors. The paper argues that rather than continuously pushing forward the rhetoric 'civic space is shrinking', these alternatives must be steeped within wider historical understanding, attuned to particularities of the social-political context, and ultimately reflective of the evolving intricate state-society relations. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Contemporary Politics is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)

Health without security?

An interview with Mark Neocleous about health, security, biopolitics, COVID-19, immunology, medicine, liberalism, police is presented. Neocleous mentions "It began when I was writing a book on the concept of police. I discovered this wonderful line of Marx in his essay on the Jewish question, where he says, 'Security is the supreme social concept of bourgeois society, the concept of police'. He brought them together in a very direct and immediate way. I thought it was an insightful observation, which gets to the heart of how security underpins everything that is done in the name of police. By using the term police I'm not referring to the narrowest sense of the word, the uniformed, professionalized police services, but the whole range of ways in which the state polices civil society, which is what Marx was alluding to. So, my interest in security originally stems from a critical engagement with the police concept. Since then I have been trying to think them together - more recently, combined with the logic of war, again understood in the broadest sense to incorporate the social wars of capitalist modernity."

Role of monetary policy in economic growth and development: from theory to empirical evidence

PurposeThis article examines the effects of credit to private sector on the business and trade activities. The effectiveness of rapid expansion in public and private borrowing through state's intervention after COVID-19 pandemic has been assessed in this study.Design/methodology/approachThe model to determine the role of credit expansion is based on four equations estimated through panel least square technique on 18 years data of 186 countries.FindingsIt is concluded that credit to private sector and external debt improve the investment in infrastructure, which is a significant determinant of gross domestic product growth. Empirical evidences corroborate that higher number of firms using banks to finance their investment and the volume of broad money determine the magnitude of credit to private sector.Originality/valueThis study explores some new evidences and aspects of the credit financing which have not been discussed in this way before.

The work of liberal health professionals in the COVID-19 pandemic context

As of March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic made an important impact on work on a global scale. In the absence of a vaccine, the most adopted measures were social distance and preference for remote work. The present study sought to understand the meanings that eight health professionals attributed to their practices in this context. Meetings held with a dentist, a physician, an occupational therapist, a nurse, a psychologist, a physiotherapist, a speech therapist, and a nutritionist, were registered through comprehensive narratives. Three categories of results were found: 1) the meaning of work, 2) the option for liberal practice, and 3) the implications of the pandemic. It was possible to see how the effects of the pandemic were peculiarly experienced by each of the participants, in some cases making them reconsider the meaning of work in their lives. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved) Abstract (Portuguese) A partir de marco de 2020 a pandemia da COVID-19 gerou importantes impactos sobre o trabalho em escala mundial. Diante da inexistencia de uma vacina, as medidas mais adotadas foram o distanciamento social e preferencia pelo trabalho remoto. O presente estudo buscou compreender quais significados que oito profissionais liberais da area da saude estavam atribuindo aos seus oficios em meio a esse contexto. Foram realizados encontros dialogicos com um odontologo, um medico, uma terapeuta ocupacional, uma enfermeira, um psicologo, uma fisioterapeuta, uma fonoaudiologa e uma nutricionista registrados por meio de narrativas compreensivas. Tres categorias de resultados foram encontradas: 1) o significado do trabalho, 2) a opcao pela atuacao liberal e 3) as implicacoes da pandemia. Foi possivel constatar como os efeitos da pandemia foram sendo vividos de maneiras peculiares por cada um dos participantes e fazendo-os repensar, em alguns casos, o significado do trabalho em suas vidas. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved) Abstract (Spanish) A partir de marzo de 2020, la pandemia COVID-19 causo importantes impactos en el trabajo a escala global. A falta de una vacuna, las medidas mas adoptadas fueron la distancia social y la preferencia por el trabajo a distancia. El presente estudio busco comprender que significados atribuian ocho profesionales de la salud a su trabajo en este contexto. Se realizaron encuentros en los que se dialogo con un dentista, un medico, una terapeuta ocupacional, una enfermera, un psicologo, una fisioterapeuta, una logopeda y una nutricionista, registrados a traves de relatos exhaustivos Se encontraron tres categorias de resultados: 1) el significado del trabajo, 2) la opcion por la practica liberal y 3) las implicaciones de la pandemia. Se pudo comprobar como los efectos de la pandemia estaban siendo vividos de forma peculiar por cada uno de los participantes y les hacia replantearse, en algunos casos, el significado del trabajo en sus vidas. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

How political identity influences COVID-19 risk perception: A model of identity-based risk perception

Past research suggests that conservatives are usually more threat-sensitive than liberals are. Yet during the COVID-19 pandemic, conservatives consistently underestimated the risk from the virus. To reconcile this paradox, we introduce a model of identity-based risk perception (IRP). This model posits that risk perceptions depend not only on objective risk but also on people's political identity and whether the risk pertains to their group identity (group risk) versus individual identity (individual risk). When asked about the group risk posed by a threat ("How many Americans will die of COVID-19?"), conservatives focus on their national pride and underestimate the risk of contracting the virus compared to liberals. However, when asked about individual risk from the same threat ("What is the probability of an individual dying of COVID-19?"), conservatives focus on individual mortality threat and overestimate the risk of succumbing to the virus compared to liberals. Three national surveys support the IRP model. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

Politics, promotions, and pandemics: Political ideologies shape consumers' responses to framed versus unframed brand logos and COVID-19 recommendations

This research examines how exposing conservative (vs. liberal) consumers to a framed logo improves their evaluation of the promoted brand relative to seeing an unframed version of that logo. A core effect reveals that framed, but not unframed, logos generally elicit more favorable product purchase intentions as conservativism increases. Such an effect is theorized to occur because framed stimuli are symbolically aligned with a need for structure that is typically associated with conservatism. Consistent with this possibility, liberals who are primed to think about structure exhibit responses similar to those made by conservatives (i.e., more favorable evaluations of framed logos). The effect observed among conservatives is eliminated, however, when frames are viewed as restrictions on freedom. The implications of these findings are also extended to examine whether framing messages that endorse governmental recommendations to adopt COVID-curbing behavior influences how conservatives respond to these advocacies. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

Climate change and the challenge to liberalism

In this editorial, we consider the ways in which liberal constitutionalism is challenged by and presents challenges to the climate crisis facing the world. Over recent decades, efforts to mitigate the climate crisis have generated a new set of norms for states and non-state actors, including regulatory norms (emission standards, carbon regulations), organising principles (common but differentiated responsibility) and fundamental norms (climate justice, intergenerational rights, human rights). However, like all norms, these remain contested. Particularly in light of their global reach, their specific behavioural implications and interpretations and the related obligations to act remain debatable and the overwhelming institutionalization of the neoliberal market economy makes clear and effective responses to climate change virtually impossible within liberal societies.

Análisis de las Apps Covid en la Unión Europea: entre la excepcionalidad y la protección de los derechos fundamentales

Los retos a los que se enfrenta la Unión Europea crean en ocasiones situaciones de tensión, en las que la organización debe responder al mismo tiempo a la protección y garantía de los derechos fundamentales de su ciudadanía, y a necesidades de índole global que excepcionalmente requieren la suspensión de esos mismos derechos por un bien mayor. Este fue el caso durante la pandemia de 2020, en el que la Unión Europea y los Estados miembros decretaron cuarentenas en contra de la libertad de movimiento, para restringir los contactos e intentar contener los contagios. En este contexto se produjo también una implementación de políticas digitales para afrontar la gestión de la crisis, en concreto nos referimos a las aplicaciones covid de rastreo y vigilancia de los contactos entre individuos. Estas aplicaciones estaban sujetas a los requisitos y garantías del marco legislativo comunitario, que hemos visto evolucionar en los últimos dos años, para hacer frente a la creciente digitalización de los servicios públicos. El caso de las aplicaciones covid es paradigmático para observar cómo se ha producido esa adaptación. La injerencia de los estados de forma excepcional durante la crisis, pero regulada hoy en instrumentos de coordinación comunitarios, ha creado nuevos marcos de navegación en internet. Los usuarios cuentan ahora con un nuevo nivel de protección de sus datos personales y su derecho a la privacidad, que si bien venía garantizada por el Reglamento de Protección de Datos (679/2016), ha dado un importante paso adelante con la aceleración de la digitalización de la administración durante la pandemia. Además, a través de una crítica desde la teoría contractual, podemos ver cómo la Unión Europea ha respondido a las dinámicas globales a nivel de normativa digital, priorizando hoy un sistema de contrapesos y límites tanto a las empresas como a las administraciones públicas, en su intercambio con los usuarios en internet. Las aplicaciones covid materializan esas limitaciones y garantías de protección de los usuarios (esencialmente de su privacidad y derechos fundamentales), que nos llevan a plantear la creación de un nuevo contrato social digital, igual que se ha transformado en otras ocasiones para responder a cuestiones como la clase, el género, la raza y la ecología.Alternate :The challenges facing the European Union (EU) can sometimes create tensions, in which the organization must answer both to the protection and guarantee of the fundamental rights of its citizens, and to global needs that exceptionally require the suspension of those same rights for the greater good. In its liberal political tradition that believes in the existence of a public and a private sphere, it has established systems of checks and balances, rule of law and stable institutions to protect the rights and freedoms of its citizens.Yet sometimes these must be suspended in cases of exceptionality for their own preservation. This was the case during the 2020 pandemic, when the European Union and its member States decreed quarantines against the consolidated and fundamental freedom of movement of persons, to restrict contacts and try to contain contagions. In this context, digital policies were also implemented to deal with crisis management, like Covid applications for tracing and monitoring contacts between individuals. This invasion of the private sphere of citizens had to be accompanied by a set of limitations and guarantees, to protect this inherent and private individual's right. These applications were subject to the requirements of the European legislative framework (the commonly known acquis communautaire), which included several legal instruments laid out by the EU to create a framework to guide the performance of its member-state Governments on this matter. Apart from the GDPR and the ePrivacy Directive, we underline the importance of Recommendation (EU) 2020/518 that connects health rights, health management and data protection;and also, the importance of Communication 2020/C 124 I/01 th t set a series of ideal elements to guide apps functions, and established the importance that it is Government agencies that manage digital apps, so there is a guarantee of the protection of citizens' rights. Through the comparative study of how apps were managed when they first appeared in 2020 throughout most of 2021, and how apps evolved (both in management and use) in 2021 and throughout 2022, we can address the evolution of EU policy on digital matters, which have meant to create new frameworks for internet navigation. At first, there were 24 different apps for the 24 out of 27 Member States who decided to create and promote the use of these instruments among their citizens. Most of them were managed by national authorities (except for Austria and Romania who were managed by Red Cross and a local NGO respectively), and were developed by a public-private collaboration, or only public agencies.At the end of the crisis, at least politically since societal weariness and the economic crisis rendered it difficult to keep up the restrictions introduced in the spring of 2020, in June 2021 the EU created its GreenPass or vaccination passport.This policy was implemented in most countries and even though 24 different national health services were still in place, they all used the EU passport, available to citizens via their national health websites or apps. Even though the exceptionality of the pandemic has ended, one of the outcomes has been the establishment of a system of data gathering, storage and management for public means, managed by National Authorities, which has technically created a digital contract where the State guarantees citizens' digital rights. This is even more important as we attend to an increase in the digitalization of public services, especially since 2020.The changes were thus promoted in a state of exception during the crisis to regulate Government interference in the citizen's private sphere but have laid a roadmap for the development of the digital framework, which may lead to the conclusion of a digital social contract. The social contract appears in the EU's liberal tradition as a metaphor of the relation between the State and the individual, it defines the notion of sovereignty as the set of rights possessed by the citizen that may be subject to special protection. Hence, the social contract serves as the basis for creating modern societies, yet it is not permanent and can (and will) change when societies change accordingly. Several critiques have been made to the original social contract, creating new and developed contracts, including the class critique (from worker's movements and Marxism during the 19th Century to Piketty's present denouncing of social inequalities), the gender critique (as Carole Pateman's Sexual Contract puts it, the social contract institutionalized patriarchy), the racial critique (where Charles W. Mills develops the gender critique from a racial point of view where the social contract created a system of domination by the Western world) and finally the environmental critique (where its advocates claim for an eco-social contract or a nature social contract that shifts the approach to a bio-centric system). Therefore, the contract serves as a theoretical framework that can be changed, and in this case, it challenges the evolution towards a digital social contract. The evolution of internet and tech structures that support the web and its processes has been marked by three stages: its birth in the 80s by the hand of the State and linked to military research;its deregulation during the 90s and the privatization of the main telecommunications enterprises (in the case of the EU, the digital policy followed this trend);and the consolidation of a digital sphere in the 21st century, where the EU has taken a step back and created a set of instruments to guarantee the protection and freedom of its citizens when they navigate the internet. We can see how the EU has responded to global dynamics at the level of digital regulation, prioritizing today a multistakeholder system with s veral actors, and counterweights and limits for both companies and public administrations in their exchange with users on the internet. With the emergence of new spaces for social relations such as in the digital sphere, new types of sovereignty must be considered in order to guarantee the rights and privacy of users (we must not forget the importance of the separation between spheres, as fear liberalism reminds us, and of limiting exceptionality to those circumstances that really appear as such). Once the foundations on which the model of digital guarantees can be developed have been laid, the next step can be the creation of a real digital contract between users and the state on the internet. However, the contract is but an idea of reason for understanding politics and institutions, which begs the question of what digital politics we aspire to as societies.

COVID-19 and the Pathologies of Australia's Regulatory State

The COVID-19 pandemic has elicited a wide range of national responses with an even wider range of outcomes in terms of infections and mortalities. Australia is a rare success story, keeping deaths comparatively low, and infections too, until the Omicron wave. What explains Australia's success? Typical explanations emphasise leaders' choices. We agree, but argue that leaders' choices, and whether these are implemented effectively, is shaped by the legacy of state transformation. Decades of neo-liberal reforms have hollowed out state capacity and confused lines of control and accountability, leaving Australia unprepared for the pandemic. Leaders thus abandoned plans and turned to ad hoc, simple to implement emergency measures – border closures and lockdowns. These averted large-scale outbreaks and deaths, but with diminishing returns as the Delta variant took hold. Conversely, Australia's regulatory state has struggled to deliver more sophisticated policy responses, even when leaders were apparently committed, including an effective quarantine system, crucial for border controls, and vaccination programme, essential for exiting the quagmire of lockdowns and closed borders, leading to a partial return to top-down governing. The Australian experience shows that to avoid a public health catastrophe or more damaging lockdowns in the next pandemic, states must re-learn to govern.

Technology and Democracy

The three books featured in this Global Perspectives review symposium – Stein Ringen's How Democracies Live;Francis Fukuyama's Liberalism and its Discontents;and Craig Calhoun, Dilip Gaonkar and Charles Taylor's Degenerations of Democracy – each raise important and urgent concerns about the fate of liberal democracy, especially in the United States. This essay argues that policymakers must focus on the interplay between democracy and technology to stimulate democratic renewal in the 21st century. Technology must be democratized through new regulatory and policy approaches to deliver the benefits of broadband internet access as widely as possible. And democracy must be technologized by leveraging new frontiers in artificial intelligence, blockchain and other advanced technologies to improve democratic accountability, public goods provision and state capacity.

Epidemic disease and the state: Is there a tradeoff between public health and liberty?

This paper examines the political economy of epidemic disease. First, it outlines the incentive and information problems facing policymakers in responding to a new epidemic. Second, it considers the existence of a tradeoff between public health and freedom. Informed by a survey of the history of public health and an analysis of the response to Covid-19, it presents evidence that such a tradeoff can obtain in the short run but that, in the long run, the negative relationship is reversed and the trade-off disappears.