Democracy in (time of) crisis: how experts and politicians conceived democracy during the pandemic

In a context where epistemic uncertainties ran deep, the pandemic exerted significant pressure on liberal democracies and their underlying principles, with instances where either policy responses or the decision-making process as such were criticized for posing potential threats to democracy. In Belgium, these debates prominently featured the perspectives of two key players: politicians and experts, whose roles in the crisis management garnered widespread attention. Discussions especially focused on the blurring boundaries between these two types of actors, the Parliament’s diminished role, the prerogatives of the federated entities, as well as the measures being adopted (e.g. curfew, health pass, mandatory facemasks). Behind their explicit content, these successive controversies unveiled differing conceptions about what a liberal democracy is/should be and how it should work. The paper provides an in-depth examination of how democracy was conceptualized and discussed in the Belgian public debate during the pandemic. Through a critical qualitative analysis, it delves into the discourse of policymakers and experts on the handling of the health crisis from early 2020 to December 2021 across various arenas (Twitter, media outlets, Parliaments). Based on this dataset, the paper is organized around three main axes of discussion. Firstly, it focuses on how politicians and experts construct – be it explicitly or not – liberal democracy in their discourse (what key features of liberal democracy were raised in debates on the health crisis management? which ones were backgrounded? which ones sparked disagreement? how "anti-democratic" measures or processes were defended by their proponents?). Secondly, it explores the convergence, or lack thereof, of these conceptions with the normative literature on liberal democracy. Thirdly, it considers whether the conceptions echo current criticism of liberal democracy. In doing so, the paper aims to provide a critical insight into debates on democracy and its realization in Belgium.