RIGHT-WING POLITICIANS AND THEIR RESPONSES TO THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC – SOME IDEOLOGICAL PARADOXES?

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic represented by far the most serious health challenge confronted by the planet as a whole since the Spanish flu in the early 20th century, affecting virtually every corner of the world due to its very high cumulative death toll and the unprecedented social and economic disruption caused by it. The novelty of the virus and its wide-ranging impacts resulted in a multitude of non-pharmaceutical interventions whose purpose was to control the spread of the disease and/or reduce the risks pertaining to the capacity of healthcare systems becoming exceeded. In turn, the measures taken by the governments in order to mitigate the negative effects of the pandemic, which were often based on the advice of health professionals, frequently contributed to further societal polarization along ideological lines. While by no means a universal phenomenon and exceptions can easily be found, surveys conducted in developed countries indicate that as a general rule the citizens feeling part of the ideological right were more likely to be opposed to or skeptical regarding the implementation of strict restrictions on public activities while those on the political left were somewhat more accepting of the need for lockdowns. Relying on a qualitative approach that entails the synthesis and analysis of a vast array of secondary sources from a multitude of disciplines, the paper has two major aims. Firstly, it demonstrates how prior to the pandemic there would have been ample grounds to assume that actors identifying with political conservatism and positioned right of the political center would be more inclined than center-left and liberal-leaning voices to insist that stringent containment measures are adopted, thus suggesting that COVID-19 has brought about a surprising ideological realignment with respect to those espousing more conservative viewpoints and those subscribing to more liberal values in terms of the underlying philosophies concerning the powers that are to be granted to governments and the need for a unified national vision in the case of emergency situations. Secondly, the paper advances the argument that in a few instances, looking specifically at the United States and Belarus, the decision taken by right-wing or socially conservative politicians to subscribe to anti-lockdown discourses and embrace laissez-faire attitudes towards disease management has not necessarily served them well in terms of improving their electoral fortunes, at least in the short-term, and may have also been a missed opportunity to earn brownie points for the causes of nationalism and strengthened national sovereignty due to neglecting to broach the topic of hyper globalization, especially with regard to it being an enabling force when it comes to epidemic-prone diseases.