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.

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

By mid-2022, the COVID-19 pandemic had caused more than 526 million confirmed infections and more than 6.2 million deaths worldwide according to the Johns Hopkins University, with approx. more than 26 million infections and 138,000 deaths in Germany alone (Johns Hopkins University 2022). Looking back at the outbreak of COVID-19 in Germany, the government and health authorities first showed a fair amount of reluctance towards acknowledging that COVID-19 would pose an imminent threat due to dynamics of exponential increase throughout the country (Siewert et al. 2020). This is exemplified in a TV statement by Jens Spahn, at that time German Federal Minister of Health, from February 3rd 2020, who argued that ‘Germany is well prepared even for an Influenza pandemic’, but ‘with only 10 infected persons in Germany one could by no means speak of an epidemic’ (Gensing 2020).

While political decision-makers in Germany did not immediately assess the dangerous situation correctly, their failures in acting more decisively must not be ranked on the same level as the early inaction in China, the country of the first local Corona outbreak (Wurster 2022). For one thing, the problem in China was that cadres in Wuhan province had not initially reported the local outbreak with the necessary urgency, speaking to the well-known problem of insufficient feedback loops in autocracies (Wurster 2013). For another valuable time to inform the world about the new virus was wasted due to extensive attempts by the Chinese regime to cover up the outbreak.

After the first recorded COVID-19 case in Germany on 27 January, 2020 (Schilling et al. 2020), the infection numbers began to rise more rapidly from mid-February onwards, partly fuelled by carnival celebrations and returning tourists from skiing resorts in the Alps (Robert Koch Institut 2020). On 11 March, 2020, the World Health Organization announced COVID-19 as a global pandemic. In view of the rising case numbers, the public sentiment changed relatively quickly. Once it became obvious that the pandemic was not containable without the implementation of stricter policy measures, decisive decisions were made quickly. The vehemence of the first infection wave obviously surpassed not only politicians’ expectations but also changed daily-life overnight. In the absence of medical treatment against the coronavirus and without a vaccination being available, Germany, on 22 March 2020, chose the path of going into a comprehensive economic and societal shutdown in order to avoid exceeding the capacity of the health care system – although countries like Spain, Italy or France had to take even more severe actions (Cheng et al. 2020). Kersten and Rixen (2021) emphasise that the multiple competences of the executive during the pandemic did not lead to a crisis of the parliamentary system of government, but were only available to the extent the parliament approved.

While during the first months of the pandemic in 2020 Germany had – compared to other European countries – relatively few infections and a much lower death toll (Johns Hopkins University 2022; Siewert et al. 2020), from an international comparative perspective, the results were not that impressive. Besides other Asian countries including Japan, Singapore or South Korea, China in particular succeeded in containing the virus in remarkably short time by implementing a ruthless lockdown, sealing off the whole city of Wuhan as well as curtailing individual liberties unthinkable in democracies under the fangkong-approach – which means ‘prevention and control’ – as it is maybe only feasible in autocracies with high state capacity (Stasavage 2020; Wurster 2022). Harsh autocratic repression was, in this case however, also flanked by expanding medical and hospital capacities in record time and implementing a high volume testing system, which eventually contributed to the success of the Chinese Zero-COVID-Strategy in the following month after the first outbreak.

Germany opted for a relatively mild version of a shutdown: not an elimination but a mitigation strategy that aimed ‘to keep infection numbers low through moderate control measures’ (Lu et al. 2021), introducing instruments similar to those in many other western countries, including cancelling public gatherings, physical distancing and mask mandates, school closings, travel restrictions and/or (mandatory) testing/self-quarantine measures (see Cheng et al. 2020). These measures came with dire consequences for almost every aspect of social, economic and political life in the country. After an initial period of relatively consistent decision-making across all German ‘Bundesländer’, the approach for fighting the virus became more regionally fragmented and incoherent from mid-April 2020 onwards (Buthe, Messerschmidt, and Cheng 2020).

In addition to the obvious direct implications for public health, COVID-19 had a variety of other negative consequences: firstly, the pandemic has caused a profound global recession, which is documented by considerable declines in economic growth, global trade, and foreign direct investments, a temporary collapse of the travel and tourism sector, and rising unemployment rates worldwide (Khan, Khan, and Shafiq 2021; Vernengo and Nabar-Bhaduri 2020). The devastating economic repercussions of the pandemic also had a heavy impact on the German economy with its dependency on export (Vidya and Prabheesh 2020). Secondly, apart from this, the pandemic and the linked social distancing policies had far-reaching detrimental health and societal effects. Among these were significant increases in depression, anxiety, and suicide rates (Brülhart et al. 2021); and rises in domestic violence due to economic and psychological pressures and the greater childcare burden (Ebert and Steinert 2021).

The release of novel COVID-19 vaccines by the end of 2020 brought a vital new means for fighting the pandemic and initiated a new era for public health programming. However, vaccination cannot be a magic bullet for ending the pandemic if popular uptake remains too low to achieve herd immunity. Corroborating this concern, the World Health Organization (2019) already defined vaccine hesitancy as one of the top ten threats to global health prior to the pandemic. In Germany specifically, vaccine acceptance rates were lower than in many neighbouring countries, despite regulations that gave non-vaccinated citizens restricted access to a range of leisure activities (Steinert et al. 2022). To date, only 77 percent of the German population have received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose, compared to, for example, 88 percent in Spain and 84 percent in Italy (Mathieu et al. 2021).

How the COVID-19 Pandemic was Analysed in Political Science

The COVID-19 pandemic is also highly influential from a political science perspective, which this Special Issue intends to shed light on. While trust in government and approval of anti-corona policy measures was at first relatively stable and high, fuelled by ‘rally-round-the-flag’ effects (Jäckle and Wagschal 2022), and allowed the government to convince German citizens to allow testing and quarantine regulations that help to stop the spread of the virus earlier than in many other countries, the continuation of various restrictive policies and the economic and social consequences of these are now fiercely criticised by a growing opposition and culminate in the increasingly radicalised and violence-glorifying ‘Querdenker’ movement. Other works focus on the way the pandemic is communicated by the media and politics, finding for example that educational nudges that help the citizens to get a better understanding of the exponential nature of the spreading of the virus can also help to increase the support for freedom-restricting non-pharmaceutical interventions such as contact restrictions (Jäckle and Ettensperger 2021). Studies also suggest that both non-compliance with COVID-19 social distancing regulations as well as COVID-19 vaccine refusal tend to be correlated with high levels of mistrust towards government and towards other health authorities as well as with conspiracy beliefs (Steinert et al. 2022).

Before turning to the content of this Special Issue, a brief, and necessarily incomplete, overview of previous research on the COVID-19 pandemic from the perspective of political science is provided here. We therefore searched within the Web of Science category ‘Political Science’ on March 27th 2022 for author keywords ‘COVID’, ‘COVID-19’ or ‘Coronavirus’ and extracted the titles, keywords and abstracts of the 442 articles that this search yielded. In a second step we manually coded these articles based on their abstracts with respect to their topic, the methodological approach, and the geographical focus.

Figure 1 illustrates that most articles focus on the policies and political strategies implemented to counter the pandemic. However, other topics such as attitudes and (political) trust, communication and media or economic issues are also very common. It is also apparent that articles dealing with crises management within the European Union received a considerable amount of attention in the political science literature.

Figure 1. Articles by topic.

Figure 2 shows that the regional focus of the vast majority of articles published is in Europe and the Americas. While cross-country comparisons are relatively common among European countries, single country studies are the modal category for most other world regions. Studies dealing with theoretical and conceptual issues are also most common in Europe. The comparative perspective, hence, shows that other world regions like Africa, the Gulf and Middle East, or the Global South in general, have been far less covered.

Figure 2. Articles by world region and methodological approach.

Among the individual countries (see Figure 3), the USA and the UK stand out clearly, which is not surprising given the size of political science scholarship in these countries. However, it is also apparent that countries of particular interest with regard to COVID-19 such as China are more frequently the subject of the analyses. It is also interesting to note that some countries such as Sweden, South Korea or Germany, which stand out as promoting very different approaches towards the COVID-19 pandemic, are frequently used in cross-country comparisons and not so much in single case studies, whereas others, such as Canada, the Netherlands, the USA or UK, are mainly considered in the context of individual case studies.

Figure 3. Single country studies and cross-country comparisons on COVID-19 by country.

Finally, Table 1 tabulates the level of analysis and the subject of analysis. More than half of all articles focus on the national level. Local, regional and other subnational levels make up about 11 percent of the articles and analyses at trans-, inter- and supra-national levels about 24 percent. With respect to the subjects of analysis, governments and citizens stand out. This makes sense, given that we already saw that policy studies and also surveys on attitudes and behaviour were main areas of research. Other, institutional subjects such as parliaments or parties are not so frequently analysed and there are also some subjects that from a conceptual point of view could be regarded as relevant as well, that have virtually not been analysed, e.g. refugees or the private sector.

Table 1. Articles by level and subject of analysis.

	level of analysis
subject of analysis	local	local & national	regional	subnational & international	national	transnational	international	supranational	supranational & national	not clear	sum
citizens	3	1	2	1	84	7	12			19	129
electors	1				13						14
government	5	6	16		70		16	9	6	2	132
government & citizens		1	1	2	14					1	17
institutions					8	1	2	1			12
opposition					1						1
parliament			1		3			1			5
parties			1		10	2					13
policy makers		1	2		9		6	4	3	8	33
political leaders	1				12		3		1	1	18
private sector	1				1		1				3
refugees							1			1	2
trans-, inter-, supranational organisations				1	3		16	4		2	26
others or not clear	1			1	6		8	1		20	37
sum	12	9	23	5	234	10	65	20	10	54	442

Outline of the Special Issue

Against the backdrop of the previous overview, this Special Issue fits well into the current research landscape by covering many of the important research areas just highlighted, while also specifically addressing previous research gaps. It contains three substantive themes – all with a focus on Germany: 1) trust and support in politics in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis; 2) impact of the pandemic on parliaments, parties and political leadership; 3) imminent and future consequences of COVID-19 for policies and policymaking. All articles particularly focus on the year 2020 and thus the first wave(s) of the pandemic.

The contributions under the first theme point to a number of important findings: Melanie Dietz, Sigrid Roßteutscher, Philipp Scherer and Lars-Christopher Stövsand show in their study based on data from the German Longitudinal Election Study (GLES) that a significant rally ‘round the flag effect’ could be detected in all party camps. According to their analysis, these high public support ratings for the government were strongly driven by fear of COVID-19 but not by actually being personally or collectively affected by the illness. Yet, this fear effect is not universal – it is only significant for supporters of the SPD, Greens and those who do not feel close to any party. In contrast, increasing fear of COVID-19 among supporters of CDU/CSU, FDP or the AfD does not increase government support. In their article, Sebastian Jäckle, Eva-Maria Trüdinger, Achim Hildebrandt and Uwe Wagschal examine how political and social trust relate to the acceptance of COVID-19 policies. Based on data from two waves of the ‘Politikpanel Deutschland’ (PPD) conducted in May and November 2020 and controlling for various individual (e.g. income loss due to the crisis or health status) as well as context level factors (e.g. regional economic prosperity or distance to COVID-19 hotspots), they find that both types of trust strongly and significantly impact the acceptance of anti-pandemic measures. Interestingly, political trust, i.e. people’s trust in political actors and institutions, increases the acceptance – particularly, as interaction analyses show, for liberal minded persons – while social trust, i.e. trust in fellow citizens, instead reduces it. People trusting their fellow citizens deem general restrictions less necessary.

Two further contributions in this Special Issue focus on the impact of the pandemic on parliaments, parties, and political leadership. Marianne Kneuer and Stefan Wallaschek analyse the public leadership and style of crisis communication of Chancellor Angela Merkel. Looking at the critical first wave of the pandemic between March and July 2020, their qualitative frame analysis of various sources like speeches (political arena), press statements (traditional media arena), and video podcasts (digital public arena) shows that frames of solidarity – both at the national and European levels – dominated the narrative and sense-making of Merkel’s crisis communication. The frame analysis furthermore shows that Chancellor Merkel balanced trade-offs between human well-being and economic well-being in her communication with the data, showing a shift from the former to the latter during the first wave of the pandemic in Germany. Interestingly, public leadership and communication styles vary between the three arenas. In the second contribution to this section, the article by Sven T. Siefken covers the functioning of the German Bundestag over two periods, namely between February and July 2020 as well as between August 2020 and January 2021. The analysis shows that – contesting some prominent public perceptions – the role of the Bundestag was not severely compromised. Looking at various parliamentary functions and activities like legislations, motions, questions but also communication, the study finds more stability in the mode of governing, oversight activity and public outreach. Hence, it offers a nuanced picture about the position of the Bundestag vis-à-vis the Bundesregierung during the first year of the pandemic.

When looking at the (long term) effects of COVID-19 Benjamin Ewert and Kathrin Loer identify the pandemic as an eruptive event with the potential to catalyse change in various policy fields. Concentrating on trigger points and spill-over effects, the authors show for the fields of public health, educational policy and food and agricultural policy that due to multi-dimensional spill-over effects new dynamics to gridlocked policy processes became possible during and in the aftermath of the acute pandemic situation. By developing a new approach for conceptualising trigger points their contribution paves the way for a better understanding of extraordinary and eruptive events and their role for policy making. Looking at policy reactions as a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic Felix Hörisch, Stefan Wurster and Markus B. Siewert analyse the German fiscal stimulus packages, ‘Package for the Future’, in comparison to those introduced in other G20 countries regarding its size as well as its contribution to the adoption of long-term environmental transformations. Based on the inclusion of different economic, social and political factors, the authors try to explain in their article why Germany opted for a rather large-scale and green fiscal policy response to the external shock of the pandemic.

Concluding Remarks

At the time of writing this introduction in May 2022, more than two years after the appearance of the novel Corona virus, the pandemic has not yet ended. The emergence of new virus variants – such as the Delta and Omicron waves that we have witnessed in 2021 and 2022 – remains an imminent threat. If new variants have a greater virulence and potentially even a greater lethality, concerted efforts to roll out effective booster vaccination campaigns will be urgently needed and may need to be complemented – yet again – with non-pharmacological interventions. Overloads of the health systems may also become realistic scenarios again. Trust in governments and health authorities, political stability, and societal peace will be important foundations for the successful management and containment of future pandemic waves. Ending with a partially optimistic outlook in mid-2022, it seems that in the longer run, Germany, as a federal-polycentric democracy, due to its broader interest consideration and participation orientation (Wurster 2021), was able to handle the crisis in a relatively balanced way. On the one hand, this deliberative approach, which takes account of different social currents, leads to a comparatively slow response capability of the system, which is not ideal in view of a pandemic that spreads very quickly and exponentially. However, in comparison with other Western countries such as the USA, the UK, Spain, Italy or France, Germany came through the pandemic well in terms of death figures¹ and also its economic development.² On the other hand, a look at China, which still strictly adheres to its Zero-Covid strategy that was successful at the beginning of the pandemic, including a comprehensive lock-down approach to contain the virus, shows that the inability to conduct a reflective evaluation of the changing situation may keep the Corona death toll low, but at a huge cost in terms of social and economic freedoms. The Chinese unwillingness to use vaccines from abroad, including Germany, which are obviously more effective than those produced domestically, also demonstrates another structural disadvantage of authoritarian states compared to countries like Germany, which have always seen the solution to the crisis primarily in terms of international cooperation.

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).

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.

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).