Democracy in Pandemic Times: a Decline or a NEW Form of Representative Democracy?

With the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus, all national governments of the EU member states have found themselves in unusual circumstances. The World Health Organization (WHO) recognized the coronavirus as a pandemic on March 11th 2020 . As there is no vaccine against the highly contangoes virus, decision-makers across the EU member states have opted for various preventive measures. For that reason it has become a common practice to limit – or freeze – the economic, social and political activity. The success of these extraordinary measures in preventing the spread of the virus depended on rapid implementation. In order to achieve that goal, some governments have opted to facilitate the decision-making process by curbing the competences of the legislative branch and extending the powers of the executive. The range of practices seems to substantially differ across the EU member states. For instance, while some governments have hardly changed the division of powers between the two branches, others have practically disempowered their legislatures, depriving them of the power to legislate and scrutinize. The overall goal of the paper is therefore to propose an analytical framework that would help to examine the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on formal powers and practices of national parliaments across the EU member states. The paper poses the following research questions: • What is the effect of the pandemic on parliamentary powers and practices across the EU member states? In which states have we observed (a) disempowerment, (b) no change or perhaps (c) empowerment of national parliaments? • Which formal or informal measures have been employed by the governments of the EU member states under study? What was the legal basis of these measures? How can we evaluate their legality and legitimacy? • Are we witnessing a demise of representative democracy or a NEW form of representative democracy emerging? Why should we look at formal competences and practices of parliaments during the COVID-19 pandemic? The major reason is that we do not know how democracy functions in extremely extraordinary situations. In other words, there is no research demonstrating to what extent a pandemic poses a challenge (or perhaps even a threat) to modern European democracies, or not. The current situation also allows us to analyze how all EU member states cope with the same challenge (pandemic) in the same period of time. A pandemic generates conditions which allow governments to sacrifice democracy for the sake of efficiency. Yet, the normative political theory does not provide us with any clear guidance as to what extent it is legitimate to sacrifice democracy if a disaster like pandemic occurs. In particular, we have no clear standards that could help us to determine whether a specific limitation of parliamentary powers (for instance, by means of fast-track procedures) has been justifiable, or not. This paper aims to fill that gap by adressing the empirical and normative concerns.