Introduction to the Special Issue: The First Year of the COVID-19 Pandemic in Germany

ABSTRACT

The article introduces the special issue on ‘The First Year of the COVID-19 Pandemic in Germany’. Besides a brief description and analysis of COVID-19 management in Germany in the first year of the pandemic from an international comparative perspective, it provides insight into the question of how the COVID-19 Pandemic was analysed in political science research. Finally, it gives an overview of the contributions of the special issue that focus on three substantive themes: first, trust and support in politics in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis in Germany; second, impact of the pandemic on German parliaments, parties, and political leadership; and third, selected imminent and future consequences of COVID-19 for policies and policymaking in Germany.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We want to thank Nico Leipold for proofreading the article and collecting initial data on COVID-19 research in political science as well as Antonia Damm and Megan Stewart for coding these articles. Special thanks go to the editors of German Politics, and especially to Kai Oppermann, for steering the publication process, as well as all the anonymous reviewers involved in the special issue. Finally, we want to thank our colleagues contributing to this special issue for the cooperative and harmonic collaboration.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Covid-19 deaths per 100.000 inhabitants as of June 8. 2022: DEU 166, FRA 220, ESP 229, UK 263, ITA 276, USA 303 (Source: https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer).

2 GDP growth 2020 in per cent: USA -3.4, DEU -4.6, FRA -7.9, ITA -8.9, UK -9.4, ESP -10.8 (Source: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Stefan Wurster

Stefan Wurster is Assistant Professor for Policy Analysis at the TUM School of Social Sciences and Technology in Munich. He conducts research in areas closely linked to sustainability such as education, research, and energy policy. His specific research interests include the comparison of democracies and autocracies as well as policy regulation. His work has been published in journals such as Contemporary Politics, Global Policy, Energy Policy, Big Data & Society, Politische Vierteljahresschrift, Swiss Political Science Review and Journal of Environment and Development.

Markus B. Siewert

Markus Siewert is Managing Director of the TUM Think Thank at the Munich School of Politics and Public Policy. Prior to that he was Senior Researcher and Lecturer at the TU Munich and Munich School of Politics and Public Policy. His research interests lie in the areas of party competition, government performance and policy regulation with a focus on policies and governance linked to the digital transformation. Moreover, he has a strong background in case-oriented research methods like QCA. Recent work has been published in Big Data & Society, Comparative Political Studies, European Journal for International Relations, European Political Science Review, International Political Science Review, Policy & Politics and PS: Political Science & Politics.

Sebastian Jäckle

Sebastian Jäckle is a Researcher at the Department of Political Science, University of Freiburg, Germany. His work centres on a variety of political science topics such as political elites, political sociology, right wing terrorism, appearance effects in elections, geographical analyses, and attitudes in transnational comparison. In his studies he applies primarily quantitative methods. Recent work has appeared in European Sociological Review, West European Politics, Journal of European Public Policy, and Swiss Political Science Review. More recently he has also published on the carbon footprint of academic conferences in European Political Science and PS: Political Science and Politics.

Janina Steinert

Janina Steinert is Assistant Professor for Global Health at the TUM School of Social Sciences and Technology. Her research focus lies primarily in the fields of global health and development economics. Research topics include the examination of inter-dependencies between poverty and disease, the prevention of gender-based violence, and the identification of ethical challenges in development research. In prior projects, she has implemented randomised controlled trials as well as behavioural games in countries of the Global South and has conducted several systematic reviews and meta-analyses. Recent work has been published in Science Advances, Lancet Global Health, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Bulletin of the World Health Organization, Social Science & Medicine and Journal of Development Economics.