The impact of Covid-19 on the electoral arena and regime change : evidence from Europe and Africa

Chan, Kenneth Ka-lok (author), Kukovič, Simona (author)

To the extent that the Covid-19 pandemic was a disruptive force that undermined governance across regimes, the global health crisis was said to have exacerbated democratic backsliding and emboldened autocratization. While a global trend towards backsliding has been widely perceived, this study is motivated by the observations that (a) there have been strong pushbacks among democracies against illiberal populism and (b) little has been done to study the resilience and/or fragility of autocratic regimes whose inherent weaknesses were exposed by the pandemic. With the help of a newly developed dataset covering elections and referendums across Europe and Africa at the national level in 2020 and 2021, the main contribution of the paper is two-fold: (1) to ascertain which factors mitigated the health and political risks posed by the pandemic irrespective of regime types in both regions, and (2) to take advantage of the most different systems design to shed light on not only the extent to which electoral integrity was adversely affected by the crisis, but also how European Union and African Union nations overwhelmed by the pandemic performed in their respective context.

• Language: English
• Keywords: democratic backsliding, autocratization, public health, risk
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: FDV - Faculty of Social Sciences
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Year: 2025
• Number of pages: Str. 51-80
• Numbering: Vol. 18, no. 1
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-166478
• UDC: 324:616.98:578.834
• ISSN on article: 1338-1385
• COBISS.SI-ID: 221336323
• Publication date in RUL: 14.01.2025

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: Journal of comparative politics
• Publisher: Department of Political Science, Center for Analysis of Administrative-Political Processes and Institutions, Alma Mater Europea-European Centre Maribor (AMEU-ECM)
• ISSN: 1338-1385
• COBISS.SI-ID: 29224285

Licences

• License: CC BY-SA 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
• Description: This Creative Commons license is very similar to the regular Attribution license, but requires the release of all derivative works under this same license.

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Title: Vpliv covid-19 na volilno areno in spremembo oblasti

Abstract

V kolikor je bila pandemija Covid-19 moteča sila, ki je spodkopala vladovanje med režimi, naj bi svetovna zdravstvena kriza še pospešila procese nazadovanja demokracije in pospešila procese avtokratizacije. Medtem ko je bil zaznan globalni trend nazadovanja, je prispevek motiviran z opažanji, da (a) je prišlo do močnega odpora med demokracijami proti neliberalnemu populizmu in (b) da je bilo malo storjenega za preučevanje odpornosti in/ali krhkosti avtokratskih režimov, katerih prirojene slabosti je razkrila pandemija. S pomočjo novorazvitega nabora podatkov, ki zajema volitve in referendume po Evropi in Afriki na nacionalni ravni v letih 2020 in 2021, je temeljni prispevek članka dvojen: (1) ugotoviti, kateri dejavniki so ublažili povzročena zdravstvena in politična tveganja zaradi pandemije ne glede na vrste režimov na obeh kontinentih in (2) izkoristiti najrazličnejše zasnove sistemov, da bi osvetlili ne le obseg, v katerem je kriza negativno vplivala na volilno integriteto, ampak tudi, koliko in zakaj so bile med pandemijo (pre)obremenjene države evropske in afriške unije.

• Keywords: Covid-19, volitve, demokracija

Projects

• Funder: ARIS - Slovenian Research and Innovation Agency
• Project number: N5-0222
• Name: Politični potencial teorij zarote. Študij Poljske in Slovenije

• Funder: Other - Other funder or multiple funders
• Funding programme: Hong Kong Research Grant Council
• Project number: GRF 12605723
• Name: Covid-19 as a Quiet Assassin of Democracy? Beyond Backsliding and Autocratization