Search

In the current assessment period, governance in Switzerland has sustained considerable continuity with recent SGI assessments. The external shock of the pandemic has been weathered well in terms of maintaining democratic, economic and societal stability. By implication, the country’s strengths and shortcomings have fundamentally remained unchanged.

With regard to some of the established indicators of political stability, Austrian politics has been marked by major turbulence recently. As in most other countries, this can be partially attributed to the complex and unprecedented challenges that arose due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Throughout the reporting period, the challenges associated with the pandemic were the dominating issue. Overall, the country and its institutions have proved considerably resilient in this crisis. The country benefited from its strong institutions, sound public budgets, and a broad consensus among its main parties (with the exception of the right-wing AfD) regarding policies.

Compared with other countries, and in particular other EU member states, Austria’s performance during the coronavirus crisis has not been unsuccessful. In terms of medical (e.g., infection and death rates) and economic indicators (e.g., unemployment), Austria’s performance was in line with the average within the EU. The government sought to balance life-saving policies (e.g., school closures, lockdowns and travel restrictions) with economic measures like stimulus packages in ways more or less similar to approaches taken in other countries. After the first wave of infections declined in late spring of 2020 and most restrictions were lifted, overconfidence within the government and public spread, resulting in a surge of infections by October, which led in turn to new restrictions being levied by November. A combination of anti[1]statist and right-wing extremist elements voiced their opposition to the restrictions in demonstrations.

France’s governance of the pandemic crisis, its performances as well as its setbacks, has to be placed into a larger context in two respects: First, when the pandemic hit France, the country was already feeling the effects of a certain number of both past and ongoing crises; second, the efficiency of the governmental responses to the coronavirus pandemic has been handicapped by systemic weaknesses.

The COVID-19 pandemic has delivered Germany’s political, economic and social systems a severe and comprehensive stress test. Judging on the basis of the first year of the pandemic, the country and its institutions have demonstrated, overall, considerable resilience. So far, the Merkel government’s crisis policies, which draw heavily and noticeably on advice from the scientific community in general and epidemiologists in particular has enjoyed broad and stable voter support.

Switzerland was one of the first European countries to be affected by the coronavirus pandemic. As with other countries that were affected early, Switzerland took longer to respond than countries that were affected later (Kohler et al. 2020; Wenger et al. 2020), because there were no best practice examples to copy (Plümper and Neumayer 2020). Measured in terms of controlling the coronavirus incidence rate (average number of new infections per 100,000 inhabitants), the country’s response to the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic and its aftermath (March – April 2020) was extraordinarily successful. However, its response to the second wave, which began in late August and reached its preliminary peak in November 2020, was significantly poorer.