Long Term Effects of Government Response to COVID

ORESTE POLLICINO SUPERVISES A RESEARCH PROJECT COMPARING 60 COUNTRIES

The scope undertaken by the COVID Crisis Lab’s research project “Global Response to COVID-19: a comparative law and economics study” reflects the vastness of the Covid phenomenon. In fact, over 150 scholars from over 60 national jurisdictions around the world are taking part in the research investigation promoted by the International University College of Turin, Young Scholars Initiative of The Institute for New Economic Thinking and the Association for the Promotion of Political Economy and Law. "The study wants to shed light on the procedural, substantive and (re)distributive aspects of the response of government institutions to the emergency", explains Oreste Pollicino, Professor of Constitutional Law at Bocconi and supervisor of the research group coordinated by Luisa Scarcella, doctoral candidate at the Department of Law of University of Graz and Aleksandar Stojanovic, post-doctoral fellow at the BAFFI CAREFIN reseach center.
 
Oreste Pollicino goes on and adds: "In particular, the research questions are focused on five aspects: the degree of participation in the elaboration of the political decisions taken (was Parliament involved? How and to what extent?); the degree of exceptionality in the exercise of power with respect to the adopted norms (Are traditional legal channels being used or not? Has there been a recourse to special legislation? Has the Constitution been the relevant compass?); the use of surveillance techniques and digital tracing and monitoring tools (Have individual rights and freedoms been respected, starting with the right to privacy?); the (re)distribution of aid and rescue measures among different social groups (Has there been a focalization of resources towards the most vulnerable layers of society?), and the degree of pluralism in policy options".
 
An imposing research study, therefore, that has a double objective. First of all, to create an information database that will be made accessible to the media and the general public, and later to assess the long-term impact on legal institutions of the political decisions taken in response to the pandemic and therefore in any state of emergency. "We are currently collecting answers from individual research groups to one or more of the questions in the research questionnaire," summarizes the Bocconi faculty member. "Subsequently, a report will be drafted for each legal system considered, where all the above-mentioned aspects will be analyzed," he concludes.

by Emanuele Elli