Democracy in Crisis? Science and Political Decision-making during the Covid-19 Pandemic

While the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic continues to reverberate through societies around the globe, the public focus has shifted to other pressing issues. This panel discussion jointly organized by the GHI Washington and the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina provides an opportunity to explore emerging narratives and historical assessments of a health crisis unprecedented in scope and global impact. Given the continued globalization of expertise before the pandemic, how did medical and public health professionals and politicians navigate cross-border assessments, on the one hand, and local political circumstances and pressures, on the other? How does the role of expertise and of political responses to (and the use of) that expertise fit into the larger story of science-based policy advice? How does the Covid-19 pandemic relate to other crises of the early twenty-first century, such as economic crises or of challenges to liberal democracies?