Back into Modernity? COVID-19 Returns Nation-State to Its Original Nature

Abstract

From a historical perspective, the curbing of epidemics was the collateral effect of emerging European Modern states. The current COVID-19 pandemic reminds that. It supports the broad international tendency to strengthen state sovereignty, nationalism, and economic protectionism. Meanwhile, in recent decades health care systems around the world have been evolving toward deregulation, use of market mechanisms, and decrease of state interventions, and it was one of the most salient evidence that Modern state is being deconstructed. The current crisis puts forward the prospect that Modern comes back with the following social conflicts, interstate rivalry, and growing power inequality between the international system actors.