Abstract
AbstractSince the onset of COVID-19, there has been a surfeit of commentary arguing that 2020 will have transformative effects on world politics. This paper asks whether, decades from now, the pandemic will be viewed as an inflection point. Critical junctures occur when an event triggers a discontinuous shift in key variables or forces a rapid acceleration of preexisting trends. Pandemics have undeniably had this effect in the far past. A welter of economic and medical developments, however, have strongly muted the geopolitical impact of pandemics in recent centuries. A review of how the novel coronavirus has affected the distribution of power and interest in its first six months suggests that COVID-19 will not have transformative effects on world politics. Absent a profound ex post shift in hegemonic ideas, 2020 is unlikely to be an inflection point.
Publisher
Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Subject
Law,Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management,Political Science and International Relations,Sociology and Political Science
Reference83 articles.
1. Is historical institutionalism bunk?
2. Babones, Salvatore . 2020. China's Superpower Dreams are Running Out of Money. Foreign Policy, 6 July.
3. Diamond, Jared . 2020. Lessons from a pandemic. Financial Times, 28 May.
4. Disgust, Anxiety, and Political Learning in the Face of Threat
5. Epidemics and Society
Cited by
59 articles.
订阅此论文施引文献
订阅此论文施引文献,注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献,订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献