Sustaining Civic Space in Times of COVID-19: Global Trends

Abstract

Autocrats worldwide have exploited COVID-19 and corresponding legal measures to curtail civil liberties. However, the health crisis and related socio-economic setbacks have also created needs-induced space, leading to a rise of civil society relief activism and propelling protests against dissatisfactory government responses. Rather than uniformly shrinking, civic space has often been sustained during the pandemic. Civil liberties have further shrunk across the Asia-Pacific region, Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), non-OECD Europe and the Caucasus, sub-Saharan Africa, and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), as 123 countries enforced 254 new legal frameworks related to COVID-19. The majority are executive measures that grant governments sweeping powers, leading to crackdowns on dissidents. Sub-Saharan Africa and non-OECD Europe and the Caucasus enacted the most legal measures, conducive to heightened repression. All five of these world regions saw the emergence of needs-induced space, illustrated by drastic declines in GDP growth, rising poverty, and increasing inequality. Despite (and sometimes because of) government efforts to weaponise COVID-19-related laws to erode civil liberties, protest activities have skyrocketed: demonstrators at more than 9,000 COVID-related protests have voiced their economic grievances and demanded better government responses. Most of these protests occurred in LAC and the Asia-Pacific, followed by MENA. Civil society organisations (CSO) have enhanced their emergency relief, filling gaps left by governments. While carrying out such relief activism seems to have been easier in more democratic countries in LAC and the Asia-Pacific, CSOs have delivered aid and advocated for state provision in autocracies as well. European policymakers should set an example of how to implement democratic laws to contain COVID-19, and they should push back against the autocratic weaponisation of such laws elsewhere. European donor governments and political foundations should seek creative ways to support relief efforts by civil society that simultaneously address economic inequality and democratic governance, thereby enabling the sustenance of civic space.