Coronavirus Politics

COVID-19 is the most significant global crisis of any of our lifetimes. The numbers have been stupefying, whether of infection and mortality, the scale of public health measures, or the economic consequences of shutdown. Coronavirus Politics identifies key threads in the global comparative discussion that continue to shed light on COVID-19 and shape debates about what it means for scholarship in health and comparative politics. Editors Scott L. Greer, Elizabeth J. King, Elize Massard da Fonseca, and André Peralta-Santos bring together over 30 authors versed in politics and the health issues in order to understand the health policy decisions, the public health interventions, the social policy decisions, their interactions, and the reasons. The book’s coverage is global, with a wide range of key and exemplary countries, and contains a mixture of comparative, thematic, and templated country studies. All go beyond reporting and monitoring to develop explanations that draw on the authors' expertise while engaging in structured conversations across the book.

Scott L. Greer is Professor of Health Management and Policy, Global Public Health and Political Science at the University of Michigan and Senior Expert Advisor on Health Governance to the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies, Brussels

Elizabeth J. King is Associate Professor of Health Behavior and Health Education at the University of Michigan's School of Public Health

Elize Massard da Fonseca is Assistant Professor of Public Administration at the Sao Paulo School of Business Administration, Getulio Vargas Foundation, Brazil

André Peralta-Santos is a medical doctor and a public health specialist.

Praise / Awards

• “Coronavirus Politics provides an invaluable snapshot of early government responses to the emerging pandemic across a wide swathe of the globe. While the policies introduced in the early months of the pandemic have been altered to meet changing circumstances, the politics that drove those early decisions, and that are so ably documented here, are likely to reverberate for a long time to come.”
  —Julia Lynch, University of Pennsylvania
• “The COVID pandemic has been an especially severe test of political leaders. Some have passed this test, largely protecting their citizens. Others have failed, in some cases spectacularly. Drawing on experiences in all parts of the world, Scott Greer and his colleagues remind us why scholars of public health must never ignore the political determinants of health.”
  —Professor Martin McKee CBE, European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies
• “Policy responses to pandemics are political and politicized. How different countries respond to the same global health challenge is often determined by domestic and international factors. In Coronavirus Politics, Greer and co-editors assemble a stellar cast of authors to shed important light on how and why COVID-19 responses have succeeded or failed. Essential reading to understand the comparative politics of responses to SARS-CoV2.”
  —Raul Pacheco-Vega, FLACSO México
• “This volume seeks to both describe and explain health and social policy responses to COVID-19 during the first 10 months of the pandemic. This is a coherent and impressive collection that scholars interested in the politics of COVID-19 and/or policy responses to the pandemic should read and engage with.”
  —Daniel Béland, James McGill Professor of Political Science, McGill University (Montreal, Canada)
• “In the rapid global unfolding and sharing of scientific information, governments have responded in divergent ways to manage the COVID-19 pandemic. This timely volume is an ambitious start to unravel what shapes these various policy and political responses. The exploration of multiple hypotheses represents a strong contribution to the commencement of global conversations about what we can learn and how we can do better for the future.”
  —Vivan Lin, University of Hong Kong
• "The editors offer an exceptionally well-researched volume on an urgent public policy issue, considering non-pharmaceutical interventions such as social distancing and test-trace-isolate support. Highly recommended."
  —CHOICE