The Pandemic as an Opportunity for the Government-Opposition Relationship? (Pre-Recorded)

• In Event: COVID Politics

Abstract

The outbreak of the global pandemic has affected the functioning of institutions, putting the mechanisms of representative democracies to the test. National parliaments are no exception. On the one hand, due to their nature, the legislative bodies represented arenas of interpersonal interaction to be protected to prevent the contagion; on the other, maintaining the debate between the party groups, the relationship with the executive and the listening of the social partners and epistemic communities was necessary. Since decisions had to be taken in an extraordinary setting and at extraordinary speed, governments often chose to avoid the parliamentary passage. Was this merely due the emergency context or was it (at least, partially) also caused by the non-collaborative attitude of opposition parties in parliament? In other words, was this choice mainly pragmatical or also political? The present work intends to answer to these questions by investigating three cases from Southern Europe: Italy, Portugal and Spain. The analysis will focus on the government initiatives, the legislative process that brought to their approval and the opposition parties’ discourse and behaviour.

Authors

• Elisabetta De Giorgi, University of Trieste

• Jose António Afonso Santana-Pereira, ISCTE-IUL

• Gianluca Piccolino