COVID-19 and shrinking civic spaces: patterns and consequences
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COVID-19 and shrinking civic spaces: patterns and consequences Felix S. Bethke · Jonas Wolff
Received: 11 August 2020 / Revised: 2 September 2020 / Accepted: 11 September 2020 © The Author(s) 2020
Abstract In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, a majority of countries worldwide have introduced severe limitations on the freedom of assembly, if not an outright lockdown, in many cases complemented by restrictions on further civil and political rights. Although restrictions were generally considered necessary to save lives and protect health care systems from overburdening, they also pose the risk of government overreach, that is, governments may use the pandemic as a convenient opportunity and justification to impose restrictions for political purposes. In this sense, COVID-19 may give yet another substantial boost to a global trend that has been unfolding since the early 2000s: the shrinking of civic spaces, which is characterized by an increase in government restrictions that target civil society actors and limit their freedoms of assembly, association, and expression. The aim of the paper is to assess civic space restrictions that have been imposed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic with a view to exploring their immediate consequences as well as their potential mid-term implications for civil society organizations in general and contentious civic activism in particular. We do so by, first, providing evidence from multiple data sources about the global spread of COVID-19-related restrictions over time and across countries. Second, we identify key dynamics at This article draws on our contribution to the PRIF Blog “COVID-19 as a Threat to Civic Spaces Around the World”, which was published on 1 April 2020 at https://blog.prif.org/2020/04/01/covid19-as-a-threat-to-civic-spaces-around-the-world. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/ s42597-020-00038-w) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. F. Bethke () · J. Wolff Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (PRIF), Baseler Straße 27–31, 60329 Frankfurt am Main, Germany E-Mail: [email protected] J. Wolff E-Mail: [email protected]
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F. Bethke, J. Wolff
work in order to assess the immediate consequences and the potential mid-term implications of these restrictions. These dynamics are illustrated by looking at experiences from individual countries (including Cambodia, Germany, Hungary, and Lebanon). Keywords Civil society · Human rights · Freedom of assembly · Repression · Autocratization
COVID-19 und das Schrumpfen zivilgesellschaftlicher Handlungsspielräume: Muster und Konsequenzen Zusammenfassung Als Reaktion auf die COVID-19-Pandemie haben Staaten weltweit die Versammlungsfreiheit stark eingeschränkt bis hin zu kompletten LockdownMaßnahmen. In vielen Fällen erfolgten dabei weitere Einschränkungen bürgerlicher und politischer Rechte. Obwohl diese Einschränkungen generell als notwendig erachtet wurden, um Leben zu retten und die Gesundheitssysteme vor Überlastung zu schützen, bergen sie
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