Legitimacy, Trust and Social Cohesion under Covid

To mitigate the spread of coronavirus, governments across the globe have rushed through legislation, or enacted emergency powers, granting them unprecedented control over the lives of their subject peoples. Whilst, even from the outset, some dissenting voices questioned the right of the state to enact such sweeping measures, most people in most states accepted the necessity for such actions in order to protect lives. It can be convincingly argued that trust and social cohesion were even advanced in the early stages of the pandemic, as a sense of ‘we’re all in it together’ was widely manifested. However, as the length of the crisis has extended, such sentiments are in much shorter supply. The inability of the drastic measures undertaken to successfully contain the spread of the virus has undermined trust in the competence of many governments, a trust further undermined by inconsistent messaging, the complexity of the new strictures and abrupt changes in policy direction. The sense of social solidarity has been undermined by differential regional controls and, in the UK’s instance, by the actions of individuals from the government’s inner circle who did not appear to be subject to the same rules as the rest of the population. This decline in trust is not universally applicable. Those governments who have dealt successfully with the virus have seen their trust levels enhanced; probably in the People’s Republic of China and demonstrably in South Korea and New Zealand. Even the quixotic response of Bolsonaro in Brazil does not yet appeared to have undermined trust in his government by the majority of Brazilians. However in many countries the decline in trust is substantial and significant. Has this decline in trust led to an undermining of the fundamental legitimacy of the states concerned? In the deeply polarised society that is the contemporary United States, pre-existing fears of an almighty Federal State trampling on individual rights have been amplified, leading to violent protest and the rise of conspiracy theories such as QAnon. The legitimacy of the European Union appeared under threat as borders closed and individual nation states were left to deal with the crisis alone, although the Macron-Merkel brokered deal of May 2020 to redistribute huge sums via the European Recovery Fund has delayed this, at least for now. In Spain, Madrid has been in revolt against national government edicts, and in Britain, the differential responses of the devolved parliaments has increased the possibility of the break up of the United Kingdom, and the right of Westminster to dictate terms to the North of the country has been called into question. Whist the response to the pandemic has undermined at least one authoritarian regime, that of Belarus, is democracy itself under threat?

On August 29th 2020 the Pandemic Perspectives group debated the issue, led by new member and Warwick University Political Theorist Gah-Kai Leung. He suggested readings that included Pelling and Dill’s briefing paper ‘ ‘Natural’ Disasters as Catalysts of Political Action‘; Cormac MacAmhlaigh’s ‘Legitimacy in the Time of Coronavirus’; The Kings College report ‘Pandemic could have ‘long lasting’ effect on Trust in Public Institutions’ and Lee Mannion’s ‘Social Trust: Are Corporations Eroding the Moral Fabric of Society?‘. David Christie added Fancourt, Steptoe and Wright’s Lancet piece ‘The Cummings Effect: Politics, Trust and Behaviours during the Covid-19 Pandemic’ and Jamie Doward’s Observer Special Report ‘Quite Frankly Terrifying: How the QAnon Conspiracy Theory is Taking Root in the UK’.

Gah-Kai began the discussion by setting out a framework for debate about state legitimacy. He began with the idea that state legitimacy in the Western world derived from the thinking of Locke, Hobbes and ideas of the social contract and could be simplified as grounded in a ‘moral right to rule’. He noted that this conception had two strands, the ‘descriptive’ – Do citizens view the state as legitimate? and the ‘normative’ – irrespective of the views of citizens, was there a fundamental underpinning that would infer legitimacy on the state? Following from this, Gah-Kai addressed the question of the legitimacy of democracies, noting the conception of the consent of the governed as the central tenet, and its ‘republican’ variant that required certain freedoms (speech, assembly, worship etc.) as necessary components. He noted that this conception of legitimacy was challenged by the anarchistic argument that all forms of organised government where inherently oppressive. He also introduced the ‘epistocratic’ critique, as espoused in the work of Jason Brennan, that promulgated legitimacy by government as a consequence of expertise and therefore rule by experts, also describing the counter-argument by scholars such as Robert Goodin that democracy delivers this very form of expertise via the collective wisdom of the populous.

Having educated the group, he then noted that legitimacy was also informed by government conforming to agreed processes of rule, and that this was challenged in times of crisis when governments short-circuited democratic norms to achieve particular ends. David Christie suggested that this kind of subversion of democratic norms did not necessarily undermine legitimacy, citing the extensive powers assumed by the National Government and the postponement of elections during both world wars, which were accepted by the people as legitimate actions in times of existential threat. Richard Kendall applied a necessary corrective, noting that the WW2 polity was a ‘National’ government, with Labour’s Clement Attlee and Ernest Bevin taking up prominent roles, as opposed to the current rule by the Conservatives alone, and that the suspension of normal parliamentary practices in WW2 was heavily criticised from the left, notably by Aneurin Bevan.

Ronan Love noted Carl Schmitt’s comment that the true nature of sovereignty is only revealed in a time of crisis, suggesting that the extensive powers of the state, although extant, were far greater than the population were consciously aware of, and when so exposed may not be viewed as legitimate. David noted the instance of the Welsh Assembly as an example of this, a body that had previously exercised very limited control even over its own finances, being suddenly imbued with extraordinary powers in the current crisis, well beyond the imagination of those living in Wales who had voted in the previous assembly elections. Ronan talked about the trickling away of the legitimacy of the Westminster government in the light of its failure to deal effectively with the pandemic. Gah-Kai noted that if ‘confidence in the government’ was synonymous with legitimacy, this was predated on the processes of government, the sense that ‘people had a say’ in its running, and that whilst people would suspend judgement if the processes were ignored but favourable outcomes achieved, bad outcomes would undermine its legitimacy. Richard noted the importance of contingency, arguing that the legitimacy of the current government was partly based on its very recent electoral victory which had delivered a large minority and in face of a weak opposition, arguing that a smaller majority and a stronger opposition would have made the issue more contested. David argued that dislike of incompetent government was not necessarily a crisis of legitimacy, arguing that the British fealty to their constitutional arrangements had proved remarkably resilient, most notably in the 1930s, when the palpable failure of the state to deal with the suffering caused by the Great Depression had merely led to the repeated election of the Conservative party. He was immediately put right by Richard, who noted that, post-devolution, woefully inadequate government did lead to a crisis of legitimacy, most notably in Scotland, where the right of Westminster to govern the Scots was now widely repudiated, suggesting that a referendum for independence would now almost certainly be won. The recent struggle over resources between Westminster and the Northern mayors, was also discussed as a crisis of legitimacy. Andy Burnham’s defence of the region, it was argued, had simultaneously legitimised the authority of regional leaders and delegitimised the centralised control of Westminster.

The debate shifted to the USA, with David advancing the argument, that the legitimacy of American democratic government was under threat, stemming largely from the actions of the current incumbent, amplified by the pandemic. He noted Rebecca Sprang’s History Workshop piece that suggested America might be in a pre-revolutionary situation. He also raised the issue of the abhorrent QAnon conspiracy, citing a recent survey that indicated 56% of Republicans believed it was at least partly true, and that from the conspiracy theorists perspective, the state’s capture by cannibalistic group justified its violent overthrow. Gah-kai again provided the theory, outlining  Benjamin Studebaker‘s. conception that there are two fundamental variants of the pluralist state. In Studebaker’s terms, ‘Small P’ pluralist states, who aimed to embrace everybody in a ‘one size fits all’ society where everyone held the same values, were inherently fragile, as the defiance of one constituted the defiance of all and therefore tended to be authoritarian. ‘Big P’ pluralists, on the other hand, like most democratic states, attempted to accommodate all views, including those who rejected pluralism entirely. He noted that whilst such states attempted to socialise its citizens into accepting a diversity of viewpoints, if a significantly large group developed who felt it was being neglected and its world view ignored the state faced a crisis of legitimacy.

Gah-Kai’s explanation of epistocratic (rule legitimated by expertise) was discussed in relation to British governance under covid. The conflicting attitude of the current Conservative administration over the role of experts was discussed, from Micheal Gove’s ‘people in this country have had enough of experts’ declaration during Brexit, to Matt Hancock’s repeated deceleration that ‘we are following the science’. Max Weber’s interpretation of the contrasting roles of the scholar and the politician was explored. In Weber’s analysis the virtue of scholar’s was ‘clear-sightedness and intellectual integrity’ and the production of ‘productive questions rather than definitive answers’, whereas the politician’s virtue was the ‘ethic of responsibility’, that politicians must be answer for the consequences of their actions. By this analysis, any attempt to pass the responsibility from politicians to experts is a reneging of the politician’s fundamental duty, and amounts to little more than a ‘Nuremberg defence’. Wether the use of experts in this way had undermined the legitimacy of the government or the legitimacy of experts in the public’s eye remained unclear to the group.

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