46 | Centre for Public Authority and International Development 2021 Report
Ideas for the future Since early 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic came to dominate government policies, global conversations and scholarly attention. Around the world, the pandemic brought unfamiliar levels of government spending and intervention, as well as a sizeable increase in public health awareness. It also prompted new uncertainties about the near and distant future, new questions about how to respond to the losses of the pandemic, and new advocacy that in the present moment should be seen as pivotal in relation to future planning for pandemics, but also in relation to global and racial inequities, and climate change.
Professor Tim Allen, Director of the Firoz Lalji Institute for Africa.
COVID-19 has directly affected CPAID’s ongoing fieldwork in Africa but has, at the same time, foregrounded the significance of a public authority lens. On the one hand, it contributes to understanding such matters as vaccine hesitancy, or incidence of public mutuality in response to public health
concerns. On the other hand, it has contributed to analysis of pandemic-related moral panics, and reinforcement of autocratic governance linked to enforced social compliance. To some degree, building on its longer-term work on public authority and epidemics, notably with respect to Ebola,
CPAID has become much involved in researching these issues, and not only in its African research sites. This work is reflected in the new Horizon 2020 Periscope project on COVID-19 in Europe, in which a public authority lens is applied, as well as a host of projects underway in the Centre’s established field-sites.
