Abstract
Covid-19 has shocked governance systems worldwide. Legislatures, in particular, have been shut down or limited due to the pandemic, yet with divergence from one country to another. In this article, we report results from a cross-sectional quantitative analysis of legislative activity during the initial reaction to this shock and identify the factors accounting for such variation. Exploring legislatures across 159 countries, we find no relation between the severity of Covid-19 and limitations on legislatures’ operation, thus suggesting that legislatures are at risk of being shut down or limited due to policy “overreaction” and that a health risk may serve as an excuse for silencing them. However, we find that legislatures in democratic countries are relatively immune to this risk, while those in frail democracies are more exposed. In partially free countries, the use of technology can mitigate this risk. We also find that the coalitional features of the government may lead to legislatures’ closing.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 200-226 |
| Number of pages | 27 |
| Journal | Political Studies |
| Volume | 72 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Feb 2024 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© The Author(s) 2022.
Funding
The authors wish to thank the 172 experts who sent them reports about their countries. For helpful comments and advice, they thank Ori Aronson, Reuven Cohen, Johannes Freudenreich, Lanny W. Martin, Moran Ofir, Oren Perez, Roy Rosenberg, Yaniv Roznai, Ayelet Sela, Ronit Waismel-Manor, the anonymous reviewers, and participants in the annual conference of the Israeli Association of Legislation, the public law workshop at Bar Ilan University, the public law workshop at the Hebrew University, the public law workshop at the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC), and the faculty seminar at the IDC. They are grateful to their research assistants: Tair Ben Zeev, Itay Cohen, Ori Harari, Itamar Hashash-Daniel, Eyal Kanfi, Chani Kot, Yuval Maor, Evgeny Saburov, and Nina Stepanets. The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was supported by a research grant from the Israeli National Institute for Health Policy Research (#2020/553). The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was supported by a research grant from the Israeli National Institute for Health Policy Research (#2020/553).
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| Israeli Association of Legislation | |
| Ori Aronson | |
| Reuven Cohen | |
| Bar-Ilan University | |
| Hebrew University of Jerusalem | |
| Israel National Institute for Health Policy Research | 2020/553 |
Keywords
- Covid-19
- coronavirus
- governance
- institutional change
- legislatures
- parliamentary activity
- parliaments
- risk
- risk perception
- shocks
