On February 8th, 2023, the Institute of European Studies in cooperation with the Department of Political Studies and the Goldman School of Public Policy was pleased to host Phillip Trein, Assistant Professor of Political Studies at the University of Lausanne and former visiting scholar at the Institute of European Studies at UC Berkeley, for a lecture under the title “The Paradox of Prevention: Authority and Democracy in Times of Crisis”. The event was co-moderated by the Director of the Institute Jeroen Dewulf and Associate Director Akasemi Newsome and was attended by 15 people in person and 30 on zoom.
Trein researched the way six countries reacted to the Covid-19 pandemic. In particular, his research focused on the link between historical responses to diseases such as the Spanish Flu and the contemporary response to the Covid pandemic. Before elaborating on his methods, Trein made sure to put special emphasis on the tendency of norms to prevail over time in specific places, thus determining the “tightness” of a normative grid through this transposition. However, he also explained that political strategies are usually meant to maximize support and garner positive feedback, which is why strict policies are often replaced with more lenient ones once they become available.
Using data provided by the Oxford Coronavirus Government Response Tracker, Trein observed a tendency of countries with past authoritarian regimes to implement stricter policies. He also underlined the temporal correlation of Covid-19 and a general rise of authoritarianism in European democracies, as well as the possible influence of advancing digitalization. In a last conclusion of his findings, Plein offered a historic perspective on recent developments through the plague in Middle Age Germany and 1920 Spain, hinting at possible positive outcomes of such crises through efforts to increase state capacities and democratic tools such as mutual aid.
The event concluded in a lively and critical discussion, in which Trein elaborated on the tools to measure authoritarianism, the anticipation of popular disobedience, perspectives on other crises policies. He once more emphasized the problem of precautionary action and welcomed diverse opinions on the paradox of precautionary action in democracies from an engaged and equally diverse audience.