The Political, Economic Social Impact of Coronavirus

Public Policy Centers in the Abnormal, writes Julia Pomares. Public policy centers naturally operate to generate informed debates about policy priorities and bring two worlds that unusually intersect: academia and politics. That process takes planning, time, patience. None of that works in times of crisis and unexpected events. Since the first think tanks were created more than a century ago, they have witnessed very critical moments, from the Great Depression in the United States, Brexit in the United Kingdom, the Asian tsunami or the rise of authoritarian governments in Latin America. Those moments tested them. The COVID-19 pandemic, a global phenomenon with different impacts in every country, is once again testing such think tanks. Just as the virus has spread much faster across the world because of our global inter-connectedness, we at CIPPEC are also reaching to other centers more than ever before, exchanging on how to care for our teams and partners, how effective different countries’ policy responses are to the pandemic and how such policies will impact the future. The following reflections from our specialists are a first contribution in this regard.

Conduct and the Law, writes Martín Böhmer. The pandemic disrupts two of the most defining behaviors of our relationship with the law. On the one hand, our traditional response poses the law as illegitimate: we sympathize with non-compliers, embrace each other, and condemn the snitch. And on the other hand, distrust, if not fear or defiance, of authority, particularly to law enforcement agencies. In our tradition, both behaviors are intertwined. Because somewhere a minimum of collective coordination must be sustained, non-compliance with the law and disobedience to perceived (or indeed) illegitimate authority provides solidarity for those who perceive themselves as (or are) illegitimately persecuted by the law. Read the full article here.

The Impact of Economic Measures, writes Ricardo Carciofi. Argentina's situation is particularly complex. The health crisis comes at a time when the economy is in recession with severe economic imbalances, a delicate social picture, and a horizon that was already uncertain by the external negotiation. Argentina has no fiscal margins and the possibility of monetary financing should be managed with caution. Therefore, the arsenal of measures available to the government is very limited. It will be impossible to avoid negative consequences on economic activity and employment. And the government will have to question how it reviews its external negotiating strategy and debt, in general, in this new context. Read the full article here.

The Pandemic Challenges “la Grieta”, writes Carolina Tchintian. There are almost 700 political parties in Argentina, making it difficult to coordinate and cooperate between forces. As a result, a style of decision prevails that is characterized by concentration in a small number of personalities. But the pandemic is challenging this. Coronavirus demands need to be met immediately, with no margin for disagreements, strikes or political squabble. There is a risk for officials to take unilateral action and an equal risk for government inaction due to party non-cooperation or obstruction to measures of action. The pandemic seems to defy the Argentine “grieta“, but we should ask ourselves: is it an intermediate pause, or will the coronavirus contribute to generate a "new style" in Argentine politics? Read the full article here.

A Stress Test for Global Governance, writes Belén Abdala. The global crisis resulting from coronavirus shows that states remain the main players in global politics: when new dangers arise, people seek out to national governments for protection. International cooperation is fragile, and isolationism is on the rise. COVID-19 appears to be helping accelerate de-integrative processes. The United States leads the way in unilateralism, and Europe fails to provide coordinated responses. In Latin America, the pandemic denotes the absence of supranational coordination. This tug-of-war between the global need for cooperation and isolated reactions is likely to promulgate fractured globalization, more compact partnerships or even fragmented, bilateral or regional agreements. Read the full article here.

We Just Know We Don't Know Anything, writes Natalia Aquilino. A positive idea that we can derive from this crisis is the need for the State to have systematic epidemiological, health, social, data of all kinds! This information allows us to build trajectories and make better predictions. In times of revaluation of the role of the State, we need to focus on the radical importance of information management. It is key to have a governance center in the Chief of Ministers office that gathers critical data and reports decision-making. And the public policy monitoring and evaluation function should not be an optional strategy but a moral and legal mandate for the production and use of information. The President's announcement on March 1st on the establishment of a Federal Evaluation Agency heads in this direction. Read the full article here.

Digital Gaps in the Coronavirus, writes Ramiro Albrieu. As already seen incipiently, digital transformation does not erase geographies; instead, it creates others, with its own obstacles, limits and differentiations, which public policy can shape if proposed. In the particular case of COVID-19 and telework, a key context factor is digital infrastructure, i.e. the physical assets required to use 3.0 or 4.0 technologies at home. If the distribution of these assets is uneven, so will the possibility of working from home. The available evidence suggests that this is the case: digital transformation is still limited to one segment of the population. Read the full article here.

A Window into Metropolitan Cities, writes Alejandro Sáez Reale. Judicial fragmentation and the absence of effective metropolitan governance have too high a cost for people in terms of quality of life and economic progress. The greater fragmentation in municipalities of a metropolitan area, the lower the level of productivity. Articulation of efforts to a common enemy can be an opportunity to generate inter-municipal and interjurisdictional coordination dialogues and actions necessary to address other challenges that also do not respect jurisdictional boundaries, such as climate change, sustainable mobility, security or access to a decent habitat. Read the full article here.

Gender Inequalities in the Open, writes José Florito and Matilde Karczmarckyk. The social implications and policy responses of the pandemic disadvantage women: the labour sectors at the forefront of the response are highly feminized; the possibility of meeting social isolation is very remote for those immersed in the informal sector of the economy (informality has more impact on women); and the suspension of classes and reduced circulation directly impacts the burden of care, which falls almost exclusively on women. We also need to take into account the unintentional consequences of social isolation based on what we learned from previous epidemics: the growth of teenage pregnancies and the disruption of educational trajectories for women. Read the full article here.

Maps and Epidemics, writes Sebastián Lew and Melina Nacke. The world will not be the same once we overcome this crisis –new challenges and imperatives will arise. Will we be able to build better urban data and statistics infrastructure to take advantage of the opportunities provided by geotechnologies and improve our analytics, decision-making and early warning capabilities? In Argentina, an application is being developed so that the national government can provide information, give test results and collaboratively map georeferenced cases throughout the country, with the aim of improving its care systems and providing assistance and information. Read the full article here.

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