Introduction: COVID-19—The Event

ABSTRACT

In this introduction, Brown outlines the main questions of the book ‘will the pandemic result in a shift towards more authoritarian political norms?’;‘will it serve as a catalyst for a resurgence in Marxist-Leninism via Chinese Socialism?’;and ‘how can liberalism adjust to a post-pandemic world?’ He will also situates the book’s approach within the tradition of International Political Theory (IPT). This is be done by identifying and unpacking three core elements of an ‘IPT approach’ focus on norms;the relations between the international and domestic;and engagement with Intellectual History. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.