The Political Repercussions of a Pandemic

In this essay, data are recovered that account for the impact of the pandemic on theconditions of democracy in the world. The source of information is the Varieties of Democracy(V-Dem) project, which for this year incorporates, in addition to its monitoring of the situationof democracy in more than two hundred countries, a compilation of state responses to thepandemic and its impact on the validity of democratic standards. In this regard, it is observedthat throughout the last decade there has been a decline in democracy, and although the effectsof the pandemic are still limited, it is to be feared that in the long term its consequences will beworse than those perceived today.And given that there is an evident relationship between the autocratic character of theregimes and the propensity to violate democratic standards with exaggerated or non-consensualmeasures to combat the pandemic, is expected a deepening of the distance between countrieswhere democracy prevails and those in which are autocratic forms of exercise of power.