(Il)legal Responses to Covid-19 in Autocratization Settings

Abstract The Covid-19 pandemic unfolded in a world undergoing democratic erosion and the further consolidation of autocracy in many countries, resulting in pressure on the norms, practices, and institutions of domestic legal orders, as well as of international law including international human rights law. This chapter discusses the system-specific challenges this has produced in autocratic and autocratization governance settings, challenges adding to, and—it is argued here—interacting with, the public health challenge of responsibly addressing the pandemic. It also provides some initial clues on when or how the pandemic may have acted as an autocratization accelerator. Comparative analysis suggests the existence of a ‘tipping point’ at which an eroding democracy becomes sufficiently autocratic and repressive to suppress legal and political challenges to its hold on power in a crisis like that of the Covid-19, so that control measures may further consolidate autocratic governance. However, the observed instances of bureaucratic resilience and episodes of protest occurring even in some consolidated autocracies also testify to the ultimate fragility of autocracy: it remains vulnerable to popular challenges that continue to present a threat to its systemic stability.