Sri Lanka: Pandemic-Catalyzed Democratic Backsliding

This chapter investigates Sri Lanka’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Covid-19 has posed for Sri Lanka not only a public health challenge and an economic challenge but also, perhaps most seriously, a crisis of constitutional democracy. Although questions have been raised about the accuracy of government statistics, the scale of testing and contact tracing, and failures in providing protective equipment to front-line workers including military personnel, there is broad public approval of the government’s crisis response. However, much more alarming are the clear signs in the government’s response that the public health emergency has provided the impetus for an aggressive executive takeover of the state, steepening the curve of de-democratization. The chapter then describes the aspects of the governmental crisis response that are the cause of worry, and offers an analysis based on a framework drawn from comparative politics and comparative constitutional law as to the agentic, institutional, and causal dimensions of the democratic backslide underway in Sri Lanka. While the pandemic has undoubtedly boosted the process of executive aggrandizement that had already commenced, this catalysis may in fact also shorten the authoritarian cycle, because the accelerated de-democratization is likely to result in executive actions that cross the threshold of public tolerance sooner in what as yet remains a procedural democracy.

A Short History and Thematic Overview

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.

Vietnam: Marshalling State and Non-State Actors

This chapter examines Vietnam’s campaign against Covid-19. When the coronavirus outbreak emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan, the government of Vietnam considered it a highly contagious disease and immediately implemented all necessary measures to protect people from the emerging pandemic, even if these strict measures resulted in massive economic losses. The chapter then introduces the regulatory framework which enabled the government and other non-state actors in Vietnam to fight the epidemic effectively. It also discusses how Vietnam contained the spread of the virus in practice from the perspectives of health and medical policy, information and technology, economic policy, and international cooperation. Ultimately, Vietnam’s unique response derives from four factors: (1) the policy that prioritized public health over economic considerations; (2) Vietnam’s having been well prepared for dealing with contagious diseases since the SARS outbreak in 2003 and the government immediately introducing strict measures to prevent the spread of Covid-19 when it emerged in China; (3) the legal framework specifying the roles of the central and local governments to avoid any bureaucratic delays in making decisions in an epidemic; and (4) the government flexibly combining coercive means with deliberate action, public education, effective governance, and effective coordination with the community and the private sector.

Bhutan: The Role of the Constitutional Monarch in a Public Health Crisis

This chapter reflects on Bhutan’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic. The people’s trust and confidence in the leadership of His Majesty the King, their government, strong Buddhist values to help each other, and the conscience of unity and solidarity proved their foremost strength in containing this pandemic as a nation. The king’s personal involvement helped guide, motivate, and encourage compliance with and support for the government’s response. However, Bhutan faced several challenges during the pandemic. Though most of the people are united, there are outliers who took advantage of the situation; there are reported cases of drug smuggling and one case of a person who escaped from quarantine. The government responded by increasing border patrols. In the long run, other solutions could be considered: installing a smart wall—using drones, sensors, and artificial intelligence patrols—would give Bhutan more control over its borders in the context of another epidemic while also enabling the government to better control smuggling.

Asian Trade and Supply Chain Linkages

This chapter begins with an overview of the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on economies of Asia generally, before turning to its impact on supply chains specifically, using the medical equipment sector as a case study to illustrate the practical complexities. It then considers the pandemic’s implications for the multilateral trade system and its impact on Asian economic integration and regionalism. The pandemic has motivated attempts to increase robustness of supply chains through diversification away from excessive dependence on China and into Southeast and South Asia, in an incremental rather than revolutionary way; no wholesale departure from manufacturing in China is anticipated. For most countries, the most efficient response is to continue to rely on international trade and global production networks, while addressing the strategic concerns through improved emergency-preparedness stockpiles. The increased pressure for reshoring, however, is part of a larger disaffection with globalization and the erosion of the rules-based international trade system.

Japan: Keeping the Death Toll to the Minimum

This chapter assesses the Japanese government’s responses to the Covid-19 pandemic. Despite the strong criticisms and deep-rooted concerns with the insufficiency of government response to Covid-19, together with a limited availability of PCR testing, the government’s concentration on the treatment of more serious patients, its focus on prevention of cluster transmission, and its soft lockdown without any legal sanctions might be sufficient to achieve the primary goal of keeping the death toll to the minimum. However, it is not clear whether it could be ultimately successful as the pandemic continues to unfold, nor is it clear whether Japan could respond effectively to the outbreak of a much more deadly disease in the future. The Japanese unique approach against Covid-19 might work out to prevent pandemic outbreaks and medical system collapse, but some problems and challenges remain. Japan surely needs to re-evaluate its response to Covid-19 and reconsider, in a holistic and systematic way, the entire infectious disease prevention system and the possibility of emergency powers during a public health crisis.

India: Federalism, Majoritarian Nationalism, and the Vulnerable and Marginalized

This chapter traces the history of Covid-19 in India and the government’s response. India has a long and tarnished history of reaching for emergency powers, which stretches back to the colonial period, in times of political crisis. Although India did not declare a formal constitutional emergency after its first reported case of Covid-19, within just under eight weeks, India went from “no health emergency” to a country-wide twenty-one-day lockdown. Despite a daily record jump in the number of deaths and cases each day since mid-March, India’s Ministry of Health, Family, and Welfare has consistently maintained a narrative that the growth rate of the Covid-19 cases in India has remained linear and not exponential; that its strict twenty-one-day lockdown, whose objective was preventive, has successfully slowed the spread of the virus; that India is “on the path of success and will win the war against the pandemic”; and that the two extensions of the lockdown should be considered an exit strategy. The chapter then discusses the policy instruments invoked to respond to the pandemic and examines some of the challenges and consequences resulting from them: the federal jurisdictional management of a pandemic, particularly in the treatment of informal migrant workers; and the reinforcement of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s populism and Hindutva majoritarian nationalism.

Governing through Contagion

This chapter focuses on the concept of “governing through contagion.” Flexing power over life, governing through contagion regulates subjects of a population to ensure their bodies are free from contagion, do not spread contagion to fellow subjects, and stay economically productive—or at least, avoid incurring economic costs of medicine and containment. In many territories, the legal strategies of control in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, such as quarantine orders and movement restrictions, grew out of earlier episodes of contagion that significantly shaped governing through contagion. The chapter then introduces three themes of governing through contagion: centralization and technology of law; normalization and technologies of moralization; and inter/dysconnectedness and the rearticulation of difference. The analysis draws on the historical ethnography of one British post-colony, Singapore, situated in three contexts: the colonial era (particularly 1868–1915), which was troubled by numerous epidemics such as plague, cholera, and smallpox; the 2003 Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak; and the Covid-19 pandemic.

Pandemics and Emergency Powers in Asia

This chapter looks at emergency powers under Covid-19 in Asia. The ancient Roman model of dictatorship suggests that any legal framework for responding to an emergency has two components: dealing effectively with the threat and preventing abuse. How can these goals best be secured in a pandemic? Within the first few months of the Covid-19 pandemic, it become readily apparent that it posed two kinds of threat. First, it posed a mortal threat to individual and public health arising from a deadly virus that could be transmitted relatively easily through everyday social activities. Second, the efforts of governments to contain its spread inevitably led to a secondary danger as social and economic life was shuttered—the danger of social and political unrest. The chapter considers two dimensions of the governmental response: the formal legal structure under which that response operates and the dynamics of expertise, trust, and responsiveness to feedback that it potentially fosters—or inhibits. It argues that the goal of returning to normal is best served when these two dimensions—the legal framework and the expertise-feedback dynamic—are aligned to enable the society to respond effectively and fairly.

Singapore: Technocracy and Transition

This chapter describes Singapore’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic. The government’s strategy revolved around the two poles of technocratic and expedient governance on the one hand and social solidarity, targeted at vulnerable or weaker segments of society, on the other. A crucial factor in implementing this dual strategy is Singapore’s smallness, in spatial and demographic terms, meaning that there are natural limits to emulation by others. At the same time, Singapore’s approach was not flawless. In particular, the wildfire-like spread of the virus in migrant workers’ dormitories emerged as an embarrassing blind spot. Other serious Covid-19-related challenges remain. The most significant of these are managing the narrative to preserve high levels of government trust and a further reckoning with the stark socio-economic disparity exacerbated by the crisis. The latter in particular may be a harbinger of wider socio-political change in Singapore which will continue to unfold long after the immediate health emergency has passed.