scholarly journals Covid-19 in Asia

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Collective Knowledge ◽  
Assistance Programs ◽  
Policy Responses ◽  
Original Essays ◽  
Law And Policy ◽  
Essential Services ◽  
Travel Restrictions ◽  
Containment Measures ◽  
Border Controls ◽  
Movement Tracking

Covid-19 in Asia: Law and Policy Contexts is an edited collection of original essays on Asia’s legal and policy responses to the Covid-19 pandemic, which, in a matter of months, swept around the globe, infecting millions. In a matter of weeks, the unimaginable became ordinary: lockdowns of cities and entire countries, physical distancing and quarantines, travel restrictions and border controls, movement-tracking technology, mandatory closures of all but essential services, economic devastation and mass unemployment, and government assistance programs on record-breaking scales. Yet a pandemic on this scale, under contemporary conditions of globalization, has left governments and their advisors scrambling to improvise solutions, often themselves unprecedented in modern times, such as the initial lockdown of Wuhan. Identifying cross-cutting themes and challenges, this collection of essays taps the collective knowledge of an interdisciplinary team of sixty-one researchers. Beginning with an epidemiological overview and survey of the law and policy themes, it covers five topics: first wave containment measures; emergency powers; technology, science, and expertise; politics, religion, and governance; and economy, climate, and sustainability.

A Short History and Thematic Overview

2021 ◽  
pp. 3-24
Author(s):  
Victor V. Ramraj ◽  
Matthew Little
Keyword(s):  
Global Scale ◽  
Complex Environment ◽  
Short History ◽  
Policy Responses ◽  
Law And Policy ◽  
Emergency Powers ◽  
Global Pandemic ◽  
The World ◽  
Containment Measures ◽  
Sheer Size

This chapter provides a short history and epidemiological overview of the Covid-19 pandemic, from its origin in Wuhan, China, to its spread across Asia and around the world. It identifies the five law and policy themes discussed in this book—first wave containment measures; emergency powers; technology, science, and expertise; politics, religion, and governance; and economy, climate, and sustainability—and concludes with some reflections and questions on Asia’s role in formulating responses to a pandemic in particular, and global crises more generally. Although Covid-19 quickly became a global pandemic, a focus on responses in Asia is both practical and intellectually defensible for three main reasons. First, China was the epicentre of the pandemic, which spread throughout January and February to other parts of the region. Second, Asia’s legal and political diversity provides a complex environment in which to study the challenges of policy responses and inter-governmental coordination, even without shifting to the global scale. Finally, Asia’s sheer size complicates matters even further.

scholarly journals How does globalization affect COVID-19 responses?

2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Steve J. Bickley ◽  
Ho Fai Chan ◽  
Ahmed Skali ◽  
David Stadelmann ◽  
Benno Torgler
Keyword(s):  
Infectious Disease ◽  
Disease Transmission ◽  
State Capacity ◽  
International Travel ◽  
Health Crisis ◽  
Government Effectiveness ◽  
Policy Responses ◽  
Travel Restrictions ◽  
High Government

Abstract Background The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the vast differences in approaches to the control and containment of coronavirus across the world and has demonstrated the varied success of such approaches in minimizing the transmission of coronavirus. While previous studies have demonstrated high predictive power of incorporating air travel data and governmental policy responses in global disease transmission modelling, factors influencing the decision to implement travel and border restriction policies have attracted relatively less attention. This paper examines the role of globalization on the pace of adoption of international travel-related non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) during the coronavirus pandemic. This study aims to offer advice on how to improve the global planning, preparation, and coordination of actions and policy responses during future infectious disease outbreaks with empirical evidence. Methods and data We analyzed data on international travel restrictions in response to COVID-19 of 185 countries from January to October 2020. We applied time-to-event analysis to examine the relationship between globalization and the timing of travel restrictions implementation. Results The results of our survival analysis suggest that, in general, more globalized countries, accounting for the country-specific timing of the virus outbreak and other factors, are more likely to adopt international travel restrictions policies. However, countries with high government effectiveness and globalization were more cautious in implementing travel restrictions, particularly if through formal political and trade policy integration. This finding is supported by a placebo analysis of domestic NPIs, where such a relationship is absent. Additionally, we find that globalized countries with high state capacity are more likely to have higher numbers of confirmed cases by the time a first restriction policy measure was taken. Conclusions The findings highlight the dynamic relationship between globalization and protectionism when governments respond to significant global events such as a public health crisis. We suggest that the observed caution of policy implementation by countries with high government efficiency and globalization is a by-product of commitment to existing trade agreements, a greater desire to ‘learn from others’ and also perhaps of ‘confidence’ in a government’s ability to deal with a pandemic through its health system and state capacity. Our results suggest further research is warranted to explore whether global infectious disease forecasting could be improved by including the globalization index and in particular, the de jure economic and political, and de facto social dimensions of globalization, while accounting for the mediating role of government effectiveness. By acting as proxies for a countries’ likelihood and speed of implementation for international travel restriction policies, such measures may predict the likely time delays in disease emergence and transmission across national borders.

Regaining Control? The Political Impact of Policy Responses to Refugee Crises

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-34
Author(s):  
Omer Solodoch
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Causal Effect ◽  
Political Trust ◽  
Sampling Period ◽  
The Political ◽  
Government Control ◽  
Policy Responses ◽  
Immigration And Asylum ◽  
Border Controls ◽  
The Impact

Abstract In response to the political turmoil surrounding the recent refugee crisis, destination countries swiftly implemented new immigration and asylum policies. Are such countercrisis policies effective in mitigating political instability by reducing anti-immigrant backlash and support for radical-right parties? The present study exploits two surveys that were coincidentally fielded during significant policy changes, sampling respondents right before and immediately after the change. I employ a regression discontinuity design to identify the short-term causal effect of the policy change on public opinion within a narrow window of the sampling period. The findings show that both Swedish border controls and the EU–Turkey agreement significantly reduced public opposition to immigration in Sweden and Germany, respectively. In Germany, support for the AfD party also decreased following the new policy. Public opinion time trends suggest that the policy effects were short lived in Sweden but durable in Germany. These effects are similar across different levels of proximity to the border and are accompanied by increasing political trust and a sense of government control over the situation. The findings have implications for understanding the impact of border controls on international public opinion, as well as for assessing the electoral effect of policy responses to global refugee crises.

scholarly journals Failing to See the Wood for the Trees: Chronic Sexual Violation and Criminal Law

2020 ◽  
Vol 84 (6) ◽  
pp. 573-595
Author(s):  
Tanya Palmer
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Case Law ◽  
Legal Framework ◽  
Sexual Autonomy ◽  
Abusive Relationship ◽  
Policy Responses ◽  
Law And Policy ◽  
Sexual Violation ◽  
Legal Responses ◽  
Original Concept

This article argues that sexual violation can take both ‘chronic’ and ‘acute’ forms. The latter, encapsulated by the offences of rape and sexual assault, refers to a discrete incident in which a victim’s sexual autonomy is violated. By contrast, the article articulates an original concept of ‘chronic sexual violation’, in which the victim’s autonomy is gradually eroded over a longer period of time, for example in an abusive relationship. In such a case it may be difficult to identify specific sexual encounters as non-consensual, and yet the victim is left with little or no control over whether and on what terms they engage in sexual activity. This conceptualisation builds on Evan Stark’s theory of coercive control, and is grounded in survivor accounts of the lived experience of sexual violation within ongoing relationships drawn from existing studies of abusive relationships, my own empirical interview data, and case law. The article contends that the limitations of law and policy responses to sexual violation within relationships can be partly explained by the illegibility of chronic sexual violation within a legal framework premised on the notion that a crime is a discrete incident. The concept of chronic sexual violation offers a way forward for crafting legal responses to this specific and pervasive form of harm, while resisting hierarchical constructions of sexual violation within intimate relationships as less serious than ‘real rape’.

scholarly journals COVID-19 and Health-Related Authority Allocation Puzzles

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-36
Author(s):  
MICHAEL DA SILVA
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Public Law ◽  
State Governments ◽  
Health Law ◽  
Scarce Resources ◽  
Law And Policy ◽  
Travel Restrictions ◽  
Health Related ◽  
Shed Light

AbstractCOVID-19-related controversies concerning the allocation of scarce resources, travel restrictions, and physical distancing norms each raise a foundational question: How should authority, and thus responsibility, over healthcare and public health law and policy be allocated? Each controversy raises principles that support claims by traditional wielders of authority in “federal” countries, like federal and state governments, and less traditional entities, like cities and sub-state nations. No existing principle divides “healthcare and public law and policy” into units that can be allocated in intuitively compelling ways. This leads to puzzles concerning (a) the principles for justifiably allocating “powers” in these domains and (b) whether and how they change during “emergencies.” This work motivates the puzzles, explains why resolving them should be part of long-term responses to COVID-19, and outlines some initial COVID-19-related findings that shed light on justifiable authority allocation, emergencies, emergency powers, and the relationships between them.

Invasive seaweeds: global and regional law and policy responses

2007 ◽  
Vol 50 (5/6) ◽  
Author(s):  
Meinhard Doelle ◽  
Moira L. McConnell ◽  
David L. VanderZwaag
Keyword(s):  
Policy Responses ◽  
Law And Policy

scholarly journals Malta

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (98) ◽  
Author(s):  
Keyword(s):  
Healthcare System ◽  
Vulnerable Population ◽  
Recent Past ◽  
Childcare Centers ◽  
Infected People ◽  
First Case ◽  
Care Workers ◽  
Travel Restrictions ◽  
Containment Measures ◽  
Sport Centers

Since the beginning of March, when the first COVID-19 case was identified in Malta, the number of infected people has increased rapidly. As of April 1, 188 people have been diagnosed with COVID-19 in Malta. Contagion is not anymore limited to Maltese citizens who have travelled abroad or been in contact with foreign travelers in recent past. Two patients have already recovered and none has died. The authorities have responded swiftly with containment measures and early actions to mobilize the healthcare system. Before the first case was diagnosed in Malta, on March 7, the authorities dedicated facilities within hospitals and accelerated purchases of protective and respiratory equipment while training care workers. As the first cases were reported, travel restrictions were put in place. They were gradually tightened from a partial ban to a full suspension of inbound flights to Malta starting March 21. Social distancing measures have also gradually been stepped up, from partial quarantine measures for travelers to the cancelation of all mass activities, the shutdown of all schools, childcare centers, bars, restaurants, sport centers, non-essential shops and services and, since March 28, the full lockdown of the most vulnerable population.

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