Legal Culture and Pandemic Management: A Comparative Analysis

Abstract This article compares the COVID-19 responses of four selected jurisdictions through the lens of legal culture. Legal culture is defined in this article as the interplay of legislation, the infrastructure and behaviour of legal institutions, and the behaviour and legal consciousness of the general population. The four jurisdictions are New Zealand, Taiwan, Germany and mainland China; they bear cross-cutting similarities and differences in terms of legal system, political system and cultural tradition. This article examines how legal culture was revealed in COVID responses and how it in turn shaped COVID responses. It illustrates the legal culture of the four jurisdictions as revealed through their respective pandemic responses. It argues that the three dimensions of legal culture interacted with each other to produce distinct pandemic responses; in other words, pandemic management is to some extent the product of legal culture.