Contentious Non-Compliance with Pandemic Response

During the COVID-19 pandemic, social conflicts have emerged that are directly related to the compliance with pandemic measures. In addition to some enforced restrictions, the Swiss pandemic strategy heavily relied on voluntary compliance and appealed to personal responsibility. In this context, we will focus on the points at which this strategy was met with political resistance and dynamised social conflicts. The research subject is the politically motivated rejection of COVID-19 containment measures and the conscious refusal to comply with them in everyday life. We are analysing this rejection of pandemic measures with the innovative concept of 'Contentious Non-Compliance' (CNC). In our definition, it comprises participation in protests against the pandemic regime or forms of intentional everyday disobedience-such as refusing to wear masks or to be vac-cinated. Most often, however, the two forms occur alongside each other. This novel concept combines the study of non-compliance with pandemic measures with a movement-study perspective.The project is centred on the following questions: What forms of politically motivated non-compliance have occurred in Switzerland and how can CNC be explained in Switzerland when compared to other Western European countries? Although protests against COVID-19 containment measures have also occurred in other European countries, in most places the individual protests did not turn into fully-fledged episodes of contention, i.e. more permanent non-compliance protests as in the German-speaking D-A-CH countries. A similar picture emerges within Switzerland, where regional differences with regard to CNC became apparent. To understand the peculiar pattern in the development of CNC protests in Switzerland, we pursue an international and interregional comparative design. We use the comparative method to analyse seven Western European countries with the aim of discerning patterns of socio-structural, cultural and institutional features that are associated with heightened protest intensities. Then, by means of a process analysis, the changing political opportunity structures for CNC are being elaborated in the selected countries. These findings are then transferred and further substantiated by ethnographic in-depth research into articulations of CNC in Switzerland. The concept of political opportunity structures allows for an in-depth understanding of various elements complicit in the emergence of contentious politics, and thus-in our case-for an analysis of non-compliance as a social conflict. Hence, we focus on non-compliance as a 'collective political struggle' that emerged in the context of the disruptively enforced implementation of new behavioural norms in the form of pandemic measures.In summary, three research fields are of particular relevance for the proposed project: Research on non-compliance, research on structural and institutional preconditions of different pandemic responses and protest research on the Corona protests. The planned research project responds to research gaps in all three fields and combines them into an innovative programme that, for the first time, brings the fields of social science research on the pandemic into dialogue with protest studies approaches. In the field of non-compliance research, the distinction between different roots of non-compliance allows us to shed light on the social and political components of non-participation in pandemic measures and to support concrete pandemic strategies. In the area of the preconditions of different pandemic responses, the international and interregional comparative design enables the investigation of the structural dimensions that have led to different forms of contention in different countries and regions. This makes the complex constellation of institutional, socio-structural and cultural preconditions for the development of CNC empirically tangible. This offers new points of reference for protest research, which is also enriched by the investigation of more everyday practices of contention that became visible outside the protests and presumably perpetuate forms of non-compliance in the rest of the population. Therefore, social science pandemic research is also enriched; for, we argue that it is precisely the level of political movements that is crucial to understand public assessment, longer-term acceptance and, ultimately, the effectiveness of pandemic measures, which remain partly dependent on voluntaristic compliance. In close cooperation with our project partners at the Federal Office of Public Health, we pursue three interrelated objectives: Firstly, we want to provide substantial insights into structural prerequisites and processual elements of CNC protests. The project develops a refined understanding of the cultural, institutional and socio-structural preconditions of CNC through an international and interregional comparative approach. Process analysis is of use in designating specific interaction dynamics in the evolution of the non-compliance protests. Secondly, we want to develop an in-depth account of CNC and its everyday aspects in Switzerland. By means of different qualitative methods, we enrich the concept of CNC by its life-world articulations and offer perspectives on different protest milieus. Thirdly, we want to synthesise these findings to obtain practically relevant and application-oriented knowledge on CNC during the pandemic in Switzerland. The focus on CNC is, however, not only useful for ongoing pandemic events but also for institutional strategies in situations of disaster or crisis, as well as for other large-scale institutional interventions in social behaviour as they might become necessary in the combat against climate change.