Governing systemic crises in the 21st century: Learning from early Covid-19 responses in Europe

The current COVID-19 crisis is causing widespread disruption in health, economic and social systems worldwide. School have been shut in many countries. International travel has been badly affected and supply chains have been interrupted. The response to this ongoing pandemic is unprecedented. Countries have introduced containment measures assorted with restriction of movements that apply to numbers of people never seen in recent history. Many countries are focusing their effort on mitigation strategies to protect the elderly that seems particularly vulnerable to the COVID-19. In addition, as stressed by the Director General of the World Health Organization on 19 March 2020, "all countries must strike a fine balance between protecting health, minimizing economic and social disruption, and respecting human rights". Over the past couple of decades, globalization and growing interdependencies have created new opportunities and benefited the many. The human civilization has never sustained so much people on the planet with such level of access to basic human needs. These progresses come also with challenges including the rapid propagation of disturbances originating in one area of the global society (e.g. health) to multiple sectors and levels of governance. The financial crisis of 2008, the Ebola crisis in West Africa in 2014-2015 and now COVID-19 are examples of systemic crises that can threaten modern societies. The impact of and response to this ongoing crisis can be understood within a framework that account for the strengths and fragilities of different systems, i.e. their resilience. Based on insights from the governance of complex systems and resilience, this project aims to assess the initial impact of and responses to the current COVID-19 systemic crisis from an interdisciplinary perspective combining insights from public health, economics and law. In particular, the project seeks to understand how different European countries cope, adapt and transform in the face of systemic disruptions such as those caused by the rapid dissemination of COVID-19 across Europe. Overall, the goal is to gain an understanding of what is affected during times of crisis, their interdependencies, and how we can improve the resilience of our governance systems.