political impact of the covid-19 pandemic political impact of the covid-19 pandemic the political impact of the covid-19 pandemic is the influence that the covid-19 pandemic has had on politics around the world. the pandemic has affected the governing and political systems of multiple countries, reflected in states of emergency, suspensions of legislative activities, isolation or deaths of multiple politicians and reschedulings of elections due to fears of spreading the virus. the pandemic has triggered broader debates about political issues such as the relative advantages of democracy and autocracy, how states respond to crises, politicization of beliefs about the virus, and the adequacy of existing frameworks of international cooperation. additionally, the pandemic has, in some cases, posed several challenges to democracy, leading to it being undermined and damaged. social distancing measures employed at president rodrigo duterte's 2020 state of the nation address during the covid-19 pandemic in the philippines. part of a series on thecovid-19 pandemicscientifically accurate atomic model of the external structure of sars-cov-2. each "ball" is an atom. covid-19 (disease) sars-cov-2 (virus) cases deaths timeline 2019 2020 january responses february responses march responses april responses may responses june responses july responses august responses september responses october responses november responses december responses 2021 january responses february responses march responses april responses may responses june responses july responses august responses september responses october responses november responses december responses 2022 january responses february responses march responses april responses may responses june responses july responses august responses september responses october responses november december 2023 january february march april may locations by country and territory africa antarctica asia europe north america oceania south america by 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ireland malaysia new zealand russia uk us covid-19 portal general impacts anti-pandemic precautions during the 2020 czech regional elections leader popularity there is evidence that the pandemic had initially caused a rally 'round the flag effect in many countries, with government approval ratings rising in italy (+27 percentage points), germany (+11), france (+11), and the united kingdom between april and july 2020. this short-term increase has become less pronounced over time, with approval ratings changing often due to how each country has handled the pandemic; the united kingdom, for example, saw a drop from an approval rating of 51% in march 2020 to 41% in july 2021, while france saw an increase from 27% to 35% in the same time-frame. in the united states, president donald trump saw a 6-point drop in approval, while state governors have seen increases as high as 55 points for new york governor andrew cuomo, 31 points for north carolina governor roy cooper, and 30 points for michigan governor gretchen whitmer. a review of polling before and one month into the pandemic suggests that incumbent governments around the world gained on average 4.7% on polls of voting-intention as the rally-round-the-flag effect kicked in, with governments who went to re-election during the pandemic mostly maintaining said improvement up until their election. in israel, the virus begun to rapidly spread after the march 2020 election. the incumbent pm benjamin netanyahu did not win enough seats to form a coalition, and the presidential mandate to form a coalition was given to his contender, benny gantz. however, netanyahu's pandemic politics brought his party the likud to reach peak public support (41-43 seats during the first wave of april–may 2020), pushing gantz to ask israel's president to transfer the mandate to netanyahu so that the latter could form, and head, a new government. states of emergency at least 84 countries have declared a state of emergency in response to the pandemic, leading to fears about misuse of power. reporters without borders has claimed that 38 countries have restricted freedom of the press as a result. other examples include banning mass protests, postponing elections or holding them while the opposition cannot effectively campaign, selectively enforcing lockdown rules on political opponents, handing out relief payments to political supporters, or scapegoating minorities. many countries have also unveiled large-scale surveillance programs for contact tracing, leading to worries about their impact on privacy. human rights and freedoms further information: human rights issues related to the covid-19 pandemic whilst the emergency powers enacted by governments in order to stem the spread of the pandemic were made in the interests of protecting public health and minimizing risk to countries' economies and crucial services such as health care, they have inadvertently led to concerns over human rights and civil liberties. the government response seen in the philippines led to accusations of government forces violently detaining, attacking, and even killing citizens who flouted public health restriction laws. violent clashes between citizens and armed government authorities have also been seen in countries including greece, the united states, and germany. human rights and civil liberties have also been threatened through digital surveillance technology by multiple governments, leading to concerns over human rights to privacy, freedom, expression and association. the ecuadorean government introduced a new gps tracking system without associated data handling legislation, leaving users' details exposed and insecure. in south korea, health authorities launched a track and trace app which asked users to disclose personal information, leading to concerns over both privacy and the potential for discrimination. furthermore, the right to freedom of movement has been curtailed by many national governments during the pandemic, with 186 countries enacting border restrictions in response to the pandemic. in relation, the ongoing discrimination faced by minorities, in particular, has also been a root cause in the socio-economic factors which has affected the freedoms and rights of the most vulnerable populations. democracy according to a 2020 freedom house report, "the covid-19 pandemic has fueled a crisis for democracy around the world". the covid-19 pandemic has opened up gaps in the action of democracy, largely due to the heavy practical and logistical disruption the virus and its subsequent "lockdown" restrictions have caused. across the world, national governments found themselves with no other choice but to suspend, cancel, or postpone numerous democratic elections at both national and subnational governmental levels. the 2020 freedom house report also highlighted a variety of responses relating to government mishandling of the pandemic against the best interests of its citizens, such as denial of the existence of covid-19 in turkmenistan and nicaragua, and the promotion of unsafe or unproven treatments in brazil and tanzania. this is due to factors that have been weakened such as "checks against abuses of power, protection of vulnerable groups, transparency and anti-corruption, free media and expression, and credible elections." as governments were entrusted with unprecedented powers to protect public health, even the strongest democracies "failed to guard themselves against abuse of power," said an op-ed on newsweek. this is because, emergency powers grant governments the ability to '"make regulations without an act of parliament" these powers are typically intended to take "rapid action" and combat instability. emergency powers have been used by some governments to extend state power this arguably occurred in moscow, where tens of thousands of cameras with facial-recognition features were supposedly installed to track contagion, however, these systems risk remaining in place after the pandemic. according to a 2020 brookings institute report, "the challenges posed by the need for mass surveillance suggest that the resilience of democratic regimes cannot be taken for granted". the same study highlighted foreign disinformation surrounding covid-19 as a threat to democracy, stating that the pandemic presented an opportunity for malign actors to "multiply the production of fake news, conspiracy theories, and manipulated information", it further stated that "russia and china exploited the chaos induced by covid-19 to promote their geopolitical interests and continue to destabilise western democracies". an article on the journal democratic theory comments that the side effect of covid-19 and will have a "long-term effect on established democracies around the world". part of this long-term effect includes the increasing prevalence of democratic backsliding; while proportional responses to a global pandemic are necessary, excessive measures under abusive enforcement have raised concerns that democracy, in nations where it is already unstable, is declining worldwide. media freedom further information: impact of the covid-19 pandemic on journalism media freedom, in its many forms, has also been greatly impacted during the covid-19 pandemic. multiple governments introduced restrictions on websites to prevent reportage on the spread of misinformation and hide poor representations of themselves. the chinese government attempted to control the global narrative on their initial unwillingness and inability to contain the initial outbreak by censoring millions of pieces of content containing over 2,000 keywords related to the pandemic on the leading communication platform wechat and the live-streaming platform yy. in addition, nations such as bangladesh and egypt have blocked international news outlets from their respective internet systems under the guise of spreading false information. this removal of the ability of media outlets to criticise governments represented a breach of freedom of expression under article 19 of the udhr. these restrictions allowed media outlets and journalists to be prosecuted and imprisoned more easily, often unfairly and arbitrarily. political discourse abulof, le penne and pu analyzed public discourse through the now (news on the web) corpus and google trends. their findings indicate that 2020 saw a dramatic rise in thinking about ‘death’ and ‘mortality,’ worldwide. they also found that the words most associated with this morbidity since 2004 are ‘covid’ and ‘coronavirus,’ and that similar trends appear in other languages. they argue that the rise is due to both the pandemic itself and pandemic politics – politicians fostering, using, and abusing, existential anxiety on a mass scale. in another discourse analysis, speeches about the pandemic delivered by donald trump and jair bolsonaro show ideological polarization to be the most frequent strategy, suggesting that political discourse can be a potential source of societal manipulation. a study on speeches made by 20 heads of government around the world during the pandemic shows that women spoke more frequently about the pandemic's impact on the individual, while men underscored war metaphors to describe covid-19 and their response. impact on international relations main article: impact of the covid-19 pandemic on international relations european union main article: european union response to the covid-19 pandemic the spanish prime minister pedro sánchez stated that "if we don't propose now a unified, powerful and effective response to this economic crisis, not only the impact will be tougher, but its effects will last longer and we will be putting at risk the entire european project", while the italian prime minister giuseppe conte commented that "the whole european project risks losing its raison d'être in the eyes of our own citizens". from 4 to 19 march, germany banned the export of personal protective equipment, and france also restricted exports of medical equipment, drawing criticism from eu officials who called for solidarity. many schengen area countries closed their borders to stem the spread of the virus. jointly