The Resilience of Democracy in the midst of the COVID-19 Pandemic. Democratic compensators in Belgium, the Netherlands and France

Although the stringency of the policy responses to the Covid-19 considerably varies across European countries, they have in common to depart from ordinary democratic governance and to restrict fundamental rights and daily liberties. In such a context, the existing literature on pandemic decision and policy-making has mainly focused on restrictive measures. Yet, while attracting a lot of media and public attention, measures restricting civil liberties are not the only ones that have been taken. To safeguard democratic governance and legitimacy, governments have also implemented packages of democratic compensators aiming to offset the negative consequences of the restrictions on the rule of law and civil liberties. Those compensators ensure democratic continuity by enabling citizens to effectively assert their rights, preserving the principles of equality and legal certainty as well as checks and balances. Interestingly, democratic compensators have been diversely used in different countries, sometimes regardless of the amount of restrictions of the rule of law and individual rights. France took very restrictive measures that were not associated with specific compensators. In contrast, the Netherlands has decided minimal restrictions, but compensators have been highly developed. Belgium is an interesting intermediary case because the restrictions were counterbalanced by democratic compensators. Building on an original dataset compiling data on exceptional measures taken daily in European regions, the EXCEPTIUS dataset , this paper focuses on decisions made since the start of the pandemic outbreak in Europe to assess the resilience of democratic governance in times of exceptionalism in Belgium, the Netherlands and France. This case selection offers variation on the resilience of democracy in times of Covid, namely the balance between restrictions and democratic compensators. Two objectives are pursued. First, we intend to document the detailed evolution of exceptional policies – including democratic compensators – in the Netherlands, Belgium and France during the first wave of the pandemic. Second, we explore three explanations to account for the observed variation in the balance of restriction measures and democratic compensators. Our first hypothesis is that democratic compensators are championed by counter-powers, whether subnational governments or opposition parties. Our second hypothesis is that ruling parties’ preferences regarding democratic rule and political liberalism shape the use of democratic compensators. Last, we consider political trust and the reaction of civil society and argue the higher the political trust, the stronger the activation of democratic compensators.