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Original Article
The COVID pandemic
and social theory: Social
democracy and public
health in the crisis
Sylvia Walby
City University of London, London, UK
Abstract
Social theory is developing in response to the coronavirus (COVID) crisis. Fundamental
questions about social justice in the relationship of individuals to society are raised by
Delanty in his review of political philosophy, including Agamben, Foucault and ˇ
Ziˇ
zek.
However, the focus on the libertarian critique of authoritarianism is not enough. The
social democratic critique of neoliberalism lies at the centre of the contesting responses
to the COVID crisis. A social democratic perspective on public health, democracy and
state action is contrasted with the anti-statists of left and right. This is addressed in
debates on the relationship between science and governance, the place of crisis in
theories of change and the conceptualisation of alternative forms of social formation.
The crisis initiated by the pandemic, cascading through society, from health to economy,
to polity and into violence, includes a contestation between social democratic and
neoliberal visions of alternative forms of society.
Keywords
Agamben, COVID, crisis, pandemic, public health, social democracy, social theory
Introduction
A contrast between libertarian and authoritarian approaches to the coronavirus (COVID)
pandemic has been central to early debates in social theory on the implications of
Corresponding author:
Sylvia Walby, Department of Sociology, City University of London, Northampton Square, London EC1V 0HB,
UK.
Email: sylvia.walby@city.ac.uk
European Journal of Social Theory
1–22
ªThe Author(s) 2020
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/1368431020970127
journals.sagepub.com/home/est
COVID for society (Agamben, 2020; Delanty, 2020b). However, this underestimates the
significance of the contestation between social democratic and neoliberal visions of
society, the understanding of public health as a social democratic intervention by states
and the potential in the crisis for a critical turning point between social democratic and
neoliberal forms of governance and society. The interpretation of the public health
intervention in theories of society, in the relationship between science, governance and
society and in the crisis is at stake in these debates.
The UK government claimed to be ‘following “the science”’ during the COVID
crisis. But ‘the science’ was deeply divided, with Independent Sage (a coalition of
independent scientists) (Independent Sage, 2020) challenging the official government
Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (a committee of scientists engaged by gov-
ernment) (SAGE, 2020). The policies and forms of governance to address COVID varied
at different moments of the crisis and between different countries. The sickness and
death rate varied between countries and between social groups. At the time of writing,
there is no cure or vaccine, so the key policies concern how to separate infected from not-
infected people. What model of justice underlies the relationship between individual and
society in the policies to stop spread of the infectious deadly virus? How is society and
governance being restructured in the ‘crisis’? COVID has killed over a million people
around the world and made many millions sick, already by 28 September 2020 (John
Hopkins University, 2020). Death rates vary with inequality, being higher among the
poor and Black and minoritised ethnic groups (Office for National Statistics, 2020). The
routes of transmission of COVID are shaped by inequalities: some forms of employment,
some forms of caring generate forms of contact that are conducive to catching the virus.
The response to COVID has generated further adverse effects on people as activities are
curtailed. COVID is a virus which spreads through droplets carried in the air and the
touching of contaminated surfaces. While healthcare alleviates some aspects of the
ensuing illness, currently, the only preventative interventions are non-pharmaceutical
and involve some form of separation of the infected from the non-infected. Achieving
separation is central to reducing and eliminating the virus. Policies to achieve separation
reduce social and economic activities. Achieving separation is challenging in a context
in which not all carriers of the virus show symptoms and tests for the virus are difficult,
so it involves engagement with those at risk of having the virus rather than those who are
visibly sick. Reducing the rate of reproduction of the virus, represented as ‘R’, is central
to reducing and eliminating COVID. The UK has one of the highest death rates from
COVID in Europe and the world (John Hopkins University, 2020). Death rates vary by
the policies that are implemented in different countries (Mega, 2020). What does social
theory have to offer to aid the understanding of the COVID pandemic?
Delanty’s (2020b) review of the response of social theory to the impact of COVID on
society identifies six political philosophical positions on the coronavirus pandemic:
utilitarian, Kantian, libertarian, biopolitical securitisation, post-capitalism and beha-
viouralism. These theorists address the relationship between the individual and society
in the development of policy through the lens of justice. They invoke concepts concern-
ing science, crisis and alternative forms of society. Agamben (2020) is positioned by
Delanty (2020b) as if he were pivotal to this debate, flanked by ˇ
Ziˇ
zek (2020) and
interpretations of Foucault (1977). In Agamben’s work, COVID is constructed as if it
2European Journal of Social Theory XX(X)
were a crisis manipulated to legitimate a state of emergency, a state of exception, in
which the executive could seize control over the usual instruments of governance to
discipline society in the search for a perceived security. Foucault (1977) is invoked to
interpret measures of lock down, distancing and masks used to stop the spread of the
virus as if they were forms of authoritarian surveillance and disciplining. ˇ
Ziˇ
zek offers
alternative outcomes of the crisis as if only barbarism or communism is possible and sees
deep challenges to capitalism. Delanty is right to reflect on issues of justice and the
relationship between individual and society. But are the interventions to separate
the infected from the not-infected really best characterised as authoritarian, and are the
alternative forms out of the crisis actually restricted to barbarism and communism?
Delanty (2020b) offers an important, agenda setting, early review of different
approaches to the relationship between individual and society that is central to theorising
the COVID crisis. How are the interests of individuals and of the social whole actually
and potentially being balanced in public policy towards COVID? In utilitarianism
(Singer), the interests of the whole are greater than that of any individual (as in the
examples of the ‘herd immunity’ approach and of lock-down and isolation). In Kantian
philosophy (Habermas, 1996; Habermas & Gu
¨nther, 2020), the value of every individual
human life is primary and utilitarian solutions are unwelcome. The libertarian approach
condemns any encroachment on personal freedoms, even if there is an identified public
interest. The use of biopolitical securitisation, theorised by Foucault, in the context of the
COVID crisis is condemned by Agamben as an unjust extension of state powers under
the guise of an unwarranted claim to a state of emergency. ˇ
Ziˇ
zek offers a vision of post-
capitalist futures that are polarised between barbarism and communism, suggesting that
new forms of solidarity are emerging from the crisis. The approach of behavioural
science (Sunstein & Thaler, 2008) focuses on the individual, who can be nudged into
compliance with government priorities. Intriguingly, Delanty picks up the theme of
democracy in his conclusion, which is rather subdued in the political philosophy that
he has been discussing.
Into this debate, I insert the concept of ‘social democracy’, which is curiously absent
though Delanty notes the significance of democracy and its contestation with ‘neoliber-
alism’. Social democratic visions and practices underpin the theory and practice of
‘public health’ interventions into COVID as well as other health issues. Social democ-
racy is the model of society that informs the public health project, in which ‘if one is sick,
we are all potentially sick’ and in which the risks and costs associated with sickness are
shared by the whole society, not only the individual who is sick. It is a social model
which insists that justice and efficiency are linked together, rather than being opposed in
a zero-sum trade off. Interventionist social democratic practices can be contrasted with
neoliberal polices that pursue more minimal intervention to (mistakenly) reduce damage
to the economy. Interpreting public health interventions as authoritarian rather than as
social democratic is a mistake. Addressing the social theory relevant to COVID requires
understanding the multiple facets of COVID in the relationship of science and govern-
ance, crisis and governance and alternative social formations. I widen the spectrum of
approaches, to include the social democratic vision that contests the neoliberal ortho-
doxy. The social democratic vision is fundamental to the public health response that is
currently actively contesting the individualistic, neoliberal understanding of society
Walby 3
found in UK (and US) policy and is actively rejecting the false polarity between indi-
viduals and society as a zero-sum game. Making visible the social democratic vision
allows for a better understanding of the arguments ongoing within science over COVID
and their interpretation within social theory. Making social democracy visible in social
theory allows for a better theorisation of the COVID crisis and its alternative outcomes.
It allows for a better grasp of multiple intersecting inequalities within social theory,
especially when combined with a complex systems approach to society. This social
democratic perspective contests the neoliberal restructuring of society.
The article addresses key areas of social theory relevant to COVID – alternative forms
of societal organisation; the relationship of knowledge and power, of science and gov-
ernance; the nature of crisis and its relationship to governance and society. It offers
revisions to social theory informed by the underestimated significance of social demo-
cratic projects, governance and social formations embedded in public health. It addresses
the tension between the real and the socially constructed in the COVID crisis; the
relevance of multiple intersecting inequalities, not only class and advances in complexity
science approach to systems for developing a theory of society.
Society: Including social democracy as a societal formation
COVID poses challenges in how social theory addresses the alternative forms of society.
Since COVID generates a crisis, it potentially generates a time of rapid change. The
identification of alternatives and the differences between them affects the understanding
of actions taken during the COVID crisis. To understand these potential changes, it is
necessary to specify the alternatives. A theory of society is needed (Delanty and Rum-
ford, 1995; Dubet, 2020; Walby, 2020a).
Several ways of thinking about differences in forms of society are found in the texts
identified by Delanty as central to the COVID debate, but these do not include social
democracy. The differences between Delanty’s texts focus on freedom versus author-
itarianism (Agamben, 2020; Foucault, 1977) and on barbarism versus communism
(ˇ
Ziˇ
zek, 2020).
There are alternative ways of making distinctions between forms of society, found,
for example, in macro-sociological debates on varieties of capitalism and on varieties of
gender regimes. A key distinction has been made between social democratic and neo-
liberal forms of society. This is not the same division as that between freedom versus
authoritarianism.
In the context of COVID, both typologies are in play: freedom versus authoritarian-
ism and social democracy versus neoliberalism. At stake is the interpretation of state
intervention, as democratic or authoritarian.
In the political philosophies identified by Delanty, the main focus is on the relation-
ship between individual and society, with a special focus on justice. The main line of
disagreement is between a libertarian focus on individual freedoms and a statist focus on
authoritarian. Further currents of discussion in this literature include utilitarianism (dis-
cussed by Habermas & Gu
¨nther, 2020) and ‘nudge’ behavioural science (Sunstein &
Thaler, 2008), though these are not full alternative societal formations.
4European Journal of Social Theory XX(X)
Agamben distinguishes between freedom and authoritarianism, drawing on Fou-
cault’s work on surveillance in times of plague. Following Foucault, state interventions
against plagues that involve increased knowledge by state agencies on individuals are
conceptualised as surveillance. This is then further interpreted as the loss of individual
freedoms and an increase in authoritarianism.
ˇ
Ziˇ
zek distinguishes between barbarism and communism in his vision of alternative
futures that might follow the COVID crisis. He suggests that current political develop-
ments engaging in progressive ways with COVID constitute a fundamental challenge to
capitalism itself.
Other literature on variations in societal formations has focused on different lines of
differentiation for comparison. A key line of difference is between neoliberalism and
social democracy, which is found in the varieties of capitalism (Hall & Soskice, 2001;
Hank´e, Rhodes & Thatcher, 2007) and varieties of gender (Walby, 2009, 2020b) regime
literature. Sometimes further categories are added, for example, conservative corporatist
(Esping-Andersen, 1990; Shire and Kumiko, 2020). But the nuances in this body of
literature do not deflect from the significance of identifying variations in forms of society
that contrast major types of social organisation that differ in the depth of democracy and
level of inequality.
There are debates as to how best to conceptualise conservative and authoritarian
forms (Delanty, 2020a). One approach considers authoritarianism to be a sub-set of
neoliberalism (Bruff, 2014), rather than a separate category. However, it is more appro-
priate to consider authoritarianism and securitisation as a logical extension of the inten-
sification of the neoliberal form (Walby, 2018; Wacquant, 2009). The definition and
conceptualisation of neoliberalism is the issue here, with debate as to the extent to which
the term is focused on liberalism and free markets or has developed to include the
utilisation of the power of the state to restructure markets and capital/labour relations
(Gane, 2014). When neoliberalism is understood to routinely include authoritarian state
forms, there is less need to distinguish between neoliberal and authoritarian society
forms (Walby, 2009, 2018).
Whatever the boundaries to the concept of neoliberalism, its ‘other’ is social
democracy.
Like neoliberalism, social democracy is a project, form of governance and a societal
formation. Social democracy has a distinctive logic, intellectual heritage and set of
institutional locations and practices. It can be identified in the economy, polity, civil
society and violence. It is a more democratic and less unequal form of capitalism and
gender regime than neoliberalism. At its core is the notion that justice and efficiency go
together and are not in opposition in a zero-sum game and that sharing the risks of
modern life (Beck, 1992, 2009) among all people rather than allowing them to be borne
by the individuals immediately affected is both just and productive.
Social democracy emerged as a theory of society during the twentieth century in the
context of the development of suffrage and the use of democratic power to tame capit-
alism (Berman, 2006). It is associated with the development of the welfare state
(Beveridge, 1944; Crosland, 1956; Titmuss, 1958), citizenship (Marshall, 1950), the
regulation of economy including of capital (Keynes, 1936; Minsky, 2008 [1986]), edu-
cation (Klasen, 2002) and the social investment state (Morel et al., 2012). It has synergy
Walby 5
with Kantian (1795) approaches to peace through peaceful means rather than the deter-
rence of larger violence at both interstate and interpersonal levels (Galtung, 1966; Haas,
1958).
There are controversies as to the proper location of the boundary between social
democracy and neoliberalism, not least concerning the place of the market in discussions
of the Third Way (Giddens, 1998). There are debates as to how democracy engages with
plural multiculturalism and the rights-based approaches to justice (Habermas, 1996
[1992]) and, in the context of COVID, whether there are limits to rights to life and to
dignity (Habermas & Gu
¨nther, 2020). The application of social democratic principles
that were originally centred on class and nation to multiple intersecting inequalities
including gender, ethnicity and nation is ongoing rather than settled (Walby, 2011).
Social democracy is also a set of practices that are varyingly embedded in institutions
and societies. After the big mid-twentieth century crisis of financial crash, economic
depression, rise of fascism, holocaust and war, social democracy emerged as a powerful
governmental project contrasted not only with neoliberalism but also with fascism and
communism. Its institutional development is linked to the institutionalisation of democ-
racy and projects led by the labour and trades union movement, feminism and inter-
nationalist anti-colonialism. It was core to a new set of political parties, some of which
gained access to state power.
The social democratic project won sufficient governmental power to shape society in
Nordics in 1930s, in Western Europe after 1945 and the European Union (EU). Within
the UK, which is overall more neoliberal than many other countries in western Europe, it
is lodged in specific institutions, especially health, including public health, education
and other institutions of the welfare state. It is embedded, though contested (Penna &
O’Brien, 2006), in international institutions including the UN, EU and the practice of
multilateralism (Walby, 2009).
The importance of social democracy as an alternative form of societal organisation in
the COVID crisis takes an acute form in the disputed significance of ‘public health’ as a
practice, institution and vision of societal formation.
Public health interventions aim to minimise or eliminate COVID by stopping trans-
mission of the virus by the practices of test, trace, isolate and support. This requires state
intervention at a significant scale, with public expenditure on a network of institutions
embedded at local, national and international levels. Public health combines philosophy,
science, governance and a theory of society. Its philosophy can be summarised as ‘if one
is sick, all are potentially sick’; so, the risks and costs of COVID and its suppression are
to be shared through society. As a theory of society and justice, it understands the
simultaneity of justice and efficiency, since if the infected are only supported in acute
care, but not materially when asked to isolate, all are at risk of being infected. It is a form
of intervention that depends on democratic governance for its legitimation and practice.
It is based on enlightenment understandings of rationality and science, broadly con-
ceived, to include data, multiple disciplines and a precautionary preventative approach
to disaster with planning, not just acute care in hospitals for those who are most sick. It is
a theory of society that understands the significance of social connections for both
transmission and support for those isolating for the good of the rest of us and which
6European Journal of Social Theory XX(X)
embeds the technical and biological into the approach to the social (Independent Sage,
2020; Women’s Budget Group, 2020).
The theorists considered by Delanty don’t get public health. They do not recognise
this social democratic, science-based approach and miss this critical alternative societal
formation and understanding of justice. Social democratic public health goes beyond
individual versus society, freedom versus authoritarianism; it is a democratic and sci-
entific collective mobilisation of state capacity. There is enormous variation between
countries in the extent to which government responses to COVID have mobilised either
neoliberal or social democratic strategies. Higher death rates are found in countries that
have had strategies informed by neoliberalism rather than social democracy (John
Hopkins University, 2020).
COVID has generated a society-wide crisis, which is potentially a moment of rapid
change to an alternative form of society. The COVID crisis has different effects on
societies that partly depend upon the pre-existing structure of society. Identifying the
alternative forms of society at stake is necessary to understand the significance of
practices and events.
In the United Kingdom, there is both a government-led attempt to restructure provi-
sion using neoliberal practices – state awarded contracts to large private corporations
rather than funding existing local public health institutions. And there is a vigorously
articulated alternative, which can be seen to coalesce around the concept of public
health: among scientists in Independent Sage, among local political leaders such as the
northern mayors and in grassroots mobilisations at neighbourhood level.
At the international level, the World Health Organisation (WHO, 2020a, 2020b)
embeds a social democratic response and is under attack from the United States, which
has withdrawn funding. Understanding the nature of these contestations matters.
Social theory is potentially important in identifying the big strategic alternatives in
collective responses to COVID. This needs to include the social democratic, which in
COVID is articulated through public health practices and institutions. The loss of indi-
vidual freedoms in reducing the social contacts that drive the reproduction and spread of
COVID is not best understood in a binary of libertarian/authoritarian axis. The contesta-
tions in the COVID crisis are better understood as part of a neoliberal/social democratic
contestation.
Science
The COVID crisis offers a new context for addressing the position of science within
social theory in at least two ways. This involves a critique of the dominant interpretation
of Foucault’s approach to science and its relationship to governance that treats science as
singular and entwined with power that draws on the significance of public health.
Further, the significance of the technical and biological in societal changes, which is
reflected in specialised science and technology studies, needs to be more fully incorpo-
rated into social theory to go beyond the simple humanism and purity of the social that
informed the early development of sociology as a discipline.
This section starts by looking at the way that interpretations of Foucault are used in
social theory to understand COVID and introduces government actions in relation to
Walby 7
science. It next considers the developments in the social theory of science and knowl-
edge and in plagues and society, which offer a theorisation of more plural forms of
science and its relationships with governance. It then focuses on the early COVID period
and the use of science by government, especially its relationship with SAGE. It then
offers an account of the challenges to the model used by government from Independent
Sage. This is further amplified by documentation and reflection on the range of forms of
science and knowledge that sought to contribute to decision-making, their institutiona-
lisation and the contested changing knowledge ecology. It concludes with the signifi-
cance of the public health-informed challenge to ‘the science’ mobilised as the defence
of UK policy on COVID for how ‘science’ should be understood in social theory. It
introduces a reflection on the use of ‘crisis’ to empower government and the conceptua-
lisation of the alternative social models.
Many, but not all, interpretations of Foucault invoke a single body of science that is
aligned with power. The UK government declared, at its daily press conferences during
the early part of the crisis, that it was ‘following the science’, as if there were a single
unified body of knowledge called science. However, rather than seeing a single science
aligned with governance, an alternative view is of science as an inherently contested
space, with plural relationships with power. The practice of science and governance
during the early stages of the COVID crisis invites reflection on the extent and signifi-
cance of the challenges within science rather than the assumption that science and power
are entwined. The challenge of public health to government is aligned with the challenge
of the social democratic project to neoliberal governance. The government position was
that ‘the science’ supported policy to reduce COVID and to learn to live with it, while the
public health position was that the policy should be used to more vigorously suppress and
even eliminate COVID. The divisions within science are more important than is captured
within the usual interpretation of Foucault.
Delanty (2020b, p. 6) invokes Foucault (1977, p. 198) in the interpretation of gov-
ernment health policy that has involved isolation and quarantine to separate the infected
(and might be infected) from the uninfected: ‘If it is true that the leper gave rise to rituals
of exclusion, which to a certain extent provided the model for and general form of the
great Confinement, then the plague gave rise to disciplinary projects’ (Foucault, 1977,
p. 198). Delanty (2020b, p. 6) continues: ‘The quarantine of the city by means of “lock
up” marked the emergence of the disciplined society around “a whole set of techniques
and institutions for measuring, supervising and correcting the abnormal”‘.
In this approach, the knowledge/power nexus is interpreted as relatively internally
consistent and in alignment with broader configurations of power. It is consistent with a
large interpretive literature around Foucault which identifies science as aligned with
governance (Rose, 2001) and a general concern that data increase discipline and reduce
freedom (Aradau & Blanke, 2016). However, there are exceptions to this reading of
Foucault, which allow for greater diversity and resistance (Bevir, 2010; Bellanova,
2017).
Throughout this discussion of science, governance and society is a discussion of the
relationship between the social, biological and technical. A Foucault-informed discus-
sion includes issues of population (Rose, 2001), but this is not enough. There is a need
for both distinction between the concepts of objects and humans (Hornborg, 2017) and
8European Journal of Social Theory XX(X)
their full engagement. There are complex forms of governance of data that seek to
protect individual privacy (Bellanova, 2017). There is a need for the more nimble
accounts of the sociobiological, including plagues and society (McNeill, 1998 [1976]),
and the sociotechnical, including practices for scientific development and for separation,
to be more fully embedded in developments in social theory, to understand COVID.
The interpretation of the science around COVID as taking a singular form is con-
tested. While the UK government attempted to wrap itself in the mantle of science,
repeatedly claiming to follow ‘the science’, there were major divisions between different
bodies of science. The government claimed to be following a scientific consensus was
established by ‘SAGE’ (2020), but this claim to be following science was disputed by
‘Independent Sage’ (2020) and other powerful scientific entities, including the British
Medical Journal (2020) and TheLancet (Horton, 2020a).
Looking beyond Foucault for an interpretation of the relationship between science
and governance suitable for contemporary social theory, alternative theoretical articula-
tions draw on contemporary work in the field of science and technology studies. Such
texts capture the divisions and contestations between bodies of scientific knowledge as
well as their engagement with wider publics and sites of governance in a COVID era.
Science is intrinsically a process of doubt, even as scientists seek to establish their own
findings as authoritative. Treating scientific findings as if they were facts, and have
always been facts, rather than an outcome of a long and contested set of scientific
processes, is a social as well as scientific process. In the institutional processes that
make up modern science, some forms of knowledge become stabilised, earlier contro-
versies are not presented to public view and the outcomes are represented to the world
beyond science as if they are facts (Latour & Woolgar, 1979).
The epistemological infrastructure (Lury, 2020) is varied, changing and contested.
There are disparate systems of knowledge within an ecology of knowledge systems,
which, even though sometimes competing, cannot be reduced simply to power (Abbott,
2001). This ecology of knowledge systems constitutes an uneven and constantly chang-
ing fitness landscape (Kauffman, 1993), in which one system takes as its environment all
other systems (Bertalanffy, 1968). The conclusion from the new social studies of science
is to be cautious about claims to a single agreed truth, to assume that there are multiple
competing alternatives that are worthy of investigation and to treat established ‘facts’ as
only a temporary settlement. Changing social conditions, including the increased digi-
talisation capacities of new forms of computing, affects how knowledge can be con-
stituted and deployed, so some forms of knowledge become more widely recognised and
authoritative than others (Lury, 2020).
Sociology, in its early days as a developing discipline, tended to purify its field so
contain only the social. The inclusion of the biological and technical in social theory,
while widely recommended, has long been a challenge (Hornborg, 2017), despite the
development of a sophisticated field of science and technology studies. It is known that
plagues have long affected societies (Spinney, 2017), leading to the rise and fall of
civilisations (Chase-Dunn & Hall, 1997; Diamond, 2005; McNeill, 1998 [1976]) and
that modernity has generated more risks (Beck, 1992, 2009), including the increasing
transfer of viruses from other species to humans under conditions of ecological change
(Quick & Fryer, 2018; Wolfe, 2011).
Walby 9
Hence, it is known that scientific knowledge takes multiple, sometimes competing
forms, and its embedding in social institutions shapes its content.
At the height of the COVID crisis, the UK government stated that it was following
‘the science’. At daily press conferences, government ministers and government scien-
tists made announcements of the findings of this science, of government policy and of
claims of their alignment. These claims were made despite multiple competing forms of
knowledge relevant to the COVID crisis, which were reported in the press and in
scientific journals.
‘The science’ cited by government was often the output from ‘SAGE’. SAGE was a
committee (and a series of sub-committees) created by government, which was made up
of scientists to advise government (SAGE, 2020). Some of these scientists were directly
paid by government, for example, the Chief Scientific Advisers to various government
Departments, the Chief Scientific Adviser and the Chief Medical Officer, while further
scientists were employed in Universities. Government would formulate questions and
invite SAGE to answer them both orally and in written papers, drawing on their relation-
ships with scientists elsewhere.
Although multiple scientific disciplines were potentially relevant, the dominant dis-
cipline was epidemiological modelling (a quantitative aspect of health science), with
secondary presence of behavioural science (a quantitative aspect of social psychology
and economics). The range of disciplines was expanded later, but the early stages, crucial
in shaping the policy agenda, were more focused. According to Costello (2020a), a
former director of the WHO, the range of disciplines on SAGE was narrow and lacking
in expertise.
While there are various epidemiological models (Enserink & Kuperschmidt, 2020),
the dominant model had been built around flu (Benjamin et al., 2020). When fed relevant
data, the model could generate alternative scenarios with estimates of the possible
numbers of cases, rates of death, rates of hospitalisation and related matters (Delamater
et al., 2019). It could suggest the likely outcome of various interventions (Bram et al.,
2020). A model is intrinsically abstracted and only as good as its assumptions and data.
The underlying model assumed that it would not be possible to eliminate the virus until a
large part of the population became immune. Immunity could be achieved by vaccine
(which at the time of writing is not available) or by the majority of the population
becoming infected and recovering, the latter being known as ‘herd immunity’.
The behavioural science expertise was used to consider the extent to which people
would be likely to comply with guidance and legislation. It was a form of quantitative
social psychology, closely related to the ‘nudge’ school of thought (Sunstein & Thaler,
2008). They estimated that compliance with severe restrictions would be short-lived, so
recommended not to attempt to lock down for too long.
Government and SAGE appeared to initially endorse the notion of ‘herd immunity’,
though, following the negative public response, followed this rapidly by a strategy to
reduce the virus by separation, especially the shielding of those most vulnerable, and to
protect the hospital capacity of the National Health Service (NHS), to reduce deaths.
There were shortages of testing capacity, which reduced the ability to follow other
policies. There were shortages of personal protective equipment that might have enabled
health staff to stay safe while looking after the sick and probably sick. There was a short
10 European Journal of Social Theory XX(X)
period of ‘lockdown’ in which people in non-essential jobs were asked to stay at home,
followed by a prolonged period of social distancing that effectively closed a sub-set of
the economy. There were efforts to increase testing capacity, using private contractors,
and the centralised collection of data in a new ‘biosecurity’ centre, but these efforts
rarely met their targets (Horton, 2020a, 2020b).
Government attempted to construct a single dominant scientific discourse alongside
with their polices and sort to use the science as a legitimation of their policies.
UK Government policy and ‘the science’ from SAGE that ostensibly supported it
were criticised and rejected by other scientists. The ‘public health’ sciences led this
critique and were supported by multiple further bodies of science and knowledge,
including the medical establishment. Coordination of this alternative in the United
Kingdom was formulated by Independent Sage (2020). Globally, this scientific cluster
had been institutionalised for many years in the WHO (2020a, 2020b).
The public health strategy was to ‘test, trace, isolate, and support’ to eliminate the
COVID virus (Independent Sage, 2020; WHO, 2020a, 2020b). Public health understood
epidemics and pandemics to be within their field of expert knowledge. Public health held
the ambition of seriously suppressing and even eliminating the virus, not merely dam-
pening the rate. Only if the virus were eliminated, could social and economic life return
to ‘normal’. This strategy had been used for a variety of infectious diseases, from
smallpox to Ebola. It was accustomed to using non-pharmaceutical (social not medical)
tools as well as pharmaceutical (e.g. vaccine) to achieve this goal. Data were needed,
hence ‘test, test, test’. But not only data, since the contacts who might be infected needed
to be traced. Tracing was understood to be a sensitive matter, so needed people with local
knowledge to contact people, not merely advanced information technology. Isolating
was necessary but was unlikely to be achieved unless the person isolating was supported
in this. Understanding the social interconnections through which disease was transmitted
and supporting the mobilisation of societal support to the individuals affected so that
they could effectively isolate was core to their method of reducing infectious disease.
People will and did comply when they trusted legitimate requests for action (Dor´elien
et al., 2020).
Public health was institutionalised locally, nationally and internationally. Locally it
was bound up with a range of local government activities, for example, licensing of
premises to prevent food poisoning from restaurants and tracing contacts in sexually
transmitted diseases. Local public health officials had expertise in tracking and tracing
sources of various forms of ill health. Nationally, public health was institutionalised in
Universities as a special branch of health and medicine. Internationally, WHO was a
leading reservoir of practical expertise that could be mobilised around the world.
The public health perspective on COVID was clearly articulated (Costello, 2020a,
2020b; Sridar, 2020) in the crisis and supported by many other scientific bodies (Horton,
2020a, 2020b), drawing on a long history of public health in the United Kingdom and
globally. One source of coordination of these alternative bodies of knowledge in the
United Kingdom was Independent Sage. Long-standing knowledge of the dangers of
pandemics and their likelihood was embedded in public health institutions at national
and international levels. In the United Kingdom, pandemics were an acknowledged
threat to National Security at the highest level (Tier one), while the WHO offered
Walby 11
warnings and institutionalised practices and protocols to engage international coopera-
tion for these repeated problems. The public health knowledge was available but was and
is marginalised in the United Kingdom.
The range of disciplines on SAGE was narrow and did not contain expertise in
relevant sources of knowledge (Costello, 2020a). It had little representation of public
health, medical science, nursing, care workers, care homes, domiciliary care and social
science. The institutions generating knowledge of gendered pathways of transmission
were not included in SAGE. From the early stages of the pandemic, the United King-
dom’s leading medical journals, TheLancet and the British Medical Journal, rapidly
published the developing science on COVID and supported the public health perspective
(Horton, 2020). Even medical science was sidelined in key decision-making by contrast
with the epidemiological modellers. Public Health England was abolished in August
2020.
During the COVID crisis, different bodies of science have been part of a wide-ranging
competition to shape government policy. Public health has not been dominant in the
United Kingdom, even though it holds considerable expertise on pandemics. Public
health, which is aligned with a social democratic approach, was less influential than the
economists.
The contestations over which form of knowledge is most authoritative matter for
social theory and for society. These contestations take place both within science and
in the relationship between scientific institutions and governance. Governments may
attempt to treat some forms of scientific knowledge as if they were ‘fact’; social theory
should address this process of authoritative knowledge formation.
The scenario suggested by Agamben, drawing on Foucault, is not supported by the
analysis of the history of the struggles over the science of COVID in the United
Kingdom. There is little development of an authoritarian state based on increased sur-
veillance, though there are new forms of data flow and also contestation over the extent
to which parliament rather than the executive is making the rules. There is a lively
contestation between the government approach, which favoured the least possible inter-
vention, and the public health approach, which argued for more substantial intervention
in test, trace, isolate and support. The approach of some sciences was mobilised by
government to support less intervention than was proposed by the public health sciences,
supported by the medical science. The government science represented in SAGE was
dominant for a period, but not hegemonic. Later in the crisis, a gap emerged between
government and SAGE.
There are multiple bodies of science, engaging with each other in a complex ecology
(Abbott, 2001), in an uneven landscape (Kauffman, 1993), and with varied capacities to
shape governance. The changing epistemological infrastructure (Lury, 2020) privileges
different forms of knowledge in different situations. Social theory relevant to COVID is
improved by paying attention to these more nuanced positions.
Rather than conceptualising increased data merely as ‘surveillance’ connected with
‘governmentality’ which is then linked to authoritarianism, distinctions need to be made
about the purpose and consequence of data collection, which allow social theory more
adequately to engage with the debates about the place of data collection associated with a
social democratic public health projects. The call by public health to ‘test, trace, isolate,
12 European Journal of Social Theory XX(X)
support’ should not be interpreted as a call for authoritarian surveillance, but rather as
part of a social democratic project to build state capacity to eliminate the virus.
Crisis
COVID has generated a crisis. How is ‘crisis’ best understood in social theory? What
does reflection on this concept and its inclusion in a theory of society offer social theory
(Beck, 1992, 2009; Gilbert, 1998; Schumpeter, 1954; Walby, 2015)? Is it real or con-
structed (Buzan et al., 1998; Hay, 1996; Mirowski, 2013)? Does crisis allow a political
executive to legitimate use of emergency powers (Klein, 2007)? Is the crisis a critical
turning point (Gramsci, 1971, Habermas, 1975), or a catastrophe (Diamond, 2005), or is
it stabilised and absorbed (Engelen et al., 2011; Minsky, 2008 [1986]), or will it cascade
through further social systems (Haas, 1958; Perrow, 1999 [1984]; Walby, 2015)? Is there
more than one crisis (Delanty, 2020a)? If it is a critical turning point, between what and
what is the change (Esping-Andersen, 1990; ˇ
Ziˇ
zek, 2020)? Is the social democratic
alternative made sufficiently visible in current debates? How does interrogating the
COVID crisis take forward these debates on the place of the concept of ‘crisis’ in social
theory? How does improving the concept of crisis and its place in social theory allow
better understanding of the COVID crisis?
In discussing COVID in relation to crisis, Delanty (2020b) draws attention to the work
of ˇ
Ziˇ
zek (2020) and Agamben (2020), which addresses these issues. Since Agamben’s
(2020) text on the process of the COVID crisis circulated widely (Diken & Laustsen,
2020; Foucault et al., 2020), structured ensuing debate (Delanty, 2021) and is based
on a pre-existing body of work on crisis (Agamben, 2005), this is the point of departure
here.
ˇ
Ziˇ
zek (2020) argues that the crisis is real, is generating social struggle and is a
potential turning point between barbarism and communism. Hence, he disputes the
notion that the crisis is only a social construction and is a turning point between freedom
and authoritarianism. He understands that the crisis may have a long way to go. How-
ever, he does not discuss social democracy as an active project in the crisis nor discuss its
potential to constitute an alternative form of society.
Agamben (2020) argues that the crisis is socially constructed rather than real, is
manipulated to give greater power to the executive branch of government, thereby
generates a more authoritarian form of governance and constitutes a critical turning
point. Each of these claims is contested. The crisis is real rather than confected. The
executive branch has not (by September 2020) gained many excessive new powers. The
contestations over the form of governance is not between freedom and authoritarianism
but between neoliberalism and social democracy. The crisis is still cascading through
society and it is too soon (in September 2020) to announce that there has been a critical
turning point.
Agamben (2020), on 26 February 2020, described the response to COVID as ‘dis-
proportionate’, ‘frenetic, irrational and entirely unfounded emergency measures adopted
against an alleged epidemic of coronavirus’ and suggested that the media was ‘provoking
an authentic state of exception with serious limitations on movement and a suspension of
daily life in entire regions’. He considers this to be ‘the tendency to use a state of
Walby 13
exception as a normal paradigm for government’. He considers the epidemic a ‘pretext’
and that ‘It is almost as if with terrorism exhausted as a cause for exceptional measures,
the invention of an epidemic offered the ideal pretext for scaling them up beyond any
limitation’. While this account by Agamben might be considered an unfortunate early
wrong call based on insufficient evidence of the infectiousness and deadliness of
COVID, it is nevertheless an exemplar of this approach and has been used as a point
of reference by many others. But, even by 17 March 2020, when the scale of the deaths
had become clear, Agamben remains consistent to his earlier position: ‘A society that
lives in a permanent state of emergency cannot be a free one. We effectively live in a
society that has sacrificed freedom to so-called “security reasons” and as a consequence
has condemned itself to living in a permanent state of fear and insecurity’. In these texts,
Agamben has effectively positioned himself as a libertarian opposed to state actions,
even when state actions save lives.
There are several points of contention in these texts by Agamben that offer sites of
discussion of important issues for social theory of crisis.
Is a crisis, such as COVID, understood as a social construct or as real? Or indeed is it
both simultaneously? Agamben sets up a dichotomy between the crisis as a social
constructed and as real. He argues that the crisis is a ‘pretext’; that measures taken by
the state are ‘irrational’ and that the basis for them is ‘entirely unfounded’. This draws on
earlier work (Agamben, 2005) in which he theorised crisis as a claim by the executive
branch of government (President, Premier, Prime Minister, cabinet) for enhanced powers
because there was a state of emergency that justified a state of exception from the usual
political processes in which there were multiple checks and balances (legislature, par-
liament, courts) to the exercise of power. This approach finds resonance in the new
security studies (Buzan et al., 1998), which analyses the extension of the powers of the
state legitimated by the claim to existential threat to national security. It has parallels in
analysis of crisis using the concept of ‘narrative’ (Ricoeur, 1984), as something that can
be manipulated by political authorities (Hay, 1996).
Agamben is wrong to suggest that there is not a real crisis. More than a million people
have died from COVID and millions more have been sick. The modern era is not devoid
of crises generated by the intersection of society and environment (Diamond, 2005),
indeed aspects of modernity may exacerbate these tendencies (Beck, 1992, 2009). Pla-
gues have long generated crises for humanity (McNeill). The structure of the environ-
ment in which the crisis occurs can affect the outcome of the crisis (Gilbert, 1998).
A crisis can be both real and socially constructed. A real crisis can have disputed
origins and remedies. The contestation of the narrative of the crisis can have significant
implications (Gramsci, 1971; Klein, 2007, 2020; Mirowski, 2013). The existence of a
struggle over the meaning and implications of a crisis does not need to entail a claim that
the crisis is not also real (Diken & Laustsen, 2020; Engelen et al., 2011).
Agamben is right to suggest that governments referred to COVID to generate a state
of emergency. It is the case that governments attempted to control the narrative of the
crisis to legitimate policies that they wished to pursue. This is not incompatible with the
crisis being real. The COVID crisis was both. The dichotomy between socially created
and real is mistaken.
14 European Journal of Social Theory XX(X)
Does the declaration of crisis as a state of emergency result in the political executive
exercising excessive power? The crisis offers an opportunity for the executive to legit-
imate a claim for more power on the grounds that in such exceptional circumstances,
these powers are needed to counter an existential threat (Agamben, 2005, 2020; Buzan
et al., 1998). But are these powers ‘excessive’? The libertarian critique leaves little space
for reasonable use of increased state powers on behalf of the social democratic project.
Agamben is right to argue that governments declared a ‘state of emergency’ or a state
of exception, which enabled greater legitimacy for powers taken by the executive branch
of government. But the way these powers were exercised saved lives. The social dem-
ocratic public health project used its power and influence to save lives and improve
health outcomes. Without lock down, many more people would have died. The powers
were not unlimited in extent or duration – lock downs were temporary. There has been
significant contestation over the powers used by government. There is still space for a
wider politics (Diken & Laustsen, 2020). Agamben assumes that increasing the powers
of the state means increasing authoritarianism. He sets up a dichotomy between ‘free-
dom’ and state actions. This can be characterised as a left libertarian position. However,
this dichotomy is mistaken. State actions can be consistent with freedom and justice. A
better distinction is between neoliberal and social democratic forms of governance.
Social democratic public health should be included, not excluded, in these debates on
the mobilisation of the power of the state.
The crisis is a state of emergency; powers were taken, but they were not, generally,
excessive, even though they were not performed competently. The theorisation of these
practices requires the mobilisation of the concept of social democracy to conceptualise
public health interventions, rather than to reduce this to a contrast between libertarianism
and authoritarianism. The ‘other’ to the mobilisation of local public health social dem-
ocratic interventions has been the outsourcing of testing to global corporations under a
neoliberal model of governance.
Is the crisis a critical turning point, a catastrophe or absorbed or cascading? A crisis
can have one of several different relationships to society (Walby, 2015). It may be a
temporary aberration followed by a return to normal, a disaster or catastrophe, a single
critical turning point to a new form of societal formation or the crisis may cascade from
one societal domain to another and another.
In Agamben’s account, the state of emergency is treated as if it were a critical turning
point towards authoritarianism. For ˇ
Ziˇ
zek, the crisis will lead to barbarism or commun-
ism. The changes in the form of governance are highly contested and not yet re-
stabilised.
The crisis may be absorbed, and the society return to equilibrium, as is the case for
small economic crises, such as bubbles (Keynes, 1936), though re-stabilisation may
require significant state action (Minsky, 2008 [1986]) or massive societal reorganisation
(Polanyi, 1957). The crisis may be a disaster or catastrophe in which many people die
and from which recuperation is not possible (Chase-Dunn & Hall, 1997; Diamond,
2005). A crisis may be a moment in which major structures change, in which the old
is destroyed and new institutions emerge (Schumpeter, 1954). Crisis may be understood
as a positive component of social and political restructuring (Haas, 1958) or negative
(Klein, 2007, 2020). These structural changes maybe systemic (Gramsci, 1971). Further,
Walby 15
a crisis in one social system may or may not cascade into another social system, depend-
ing on how closely coupled they are (Haldane & May, 2011; Perrow, 1999 [1984], 2011
[2007]). The crisis may cascade through multiple societal domains leading to a major
change in the societal formation (Walby, 2015). The temporality of crisis needs to be
taken into account before judgements are made as to whether it is a critical turning point.
This analysis of crisis requires a theory of society, of how changes in one institutional
domain may change others, of how societal domains are interconnected.
If the crisis is a critical turning point, between what alternative societal formations is
it turning? For Agamben, the alternatives appear to be freedom or authoritarianism. For
ˇ
Ziˇ
zek, barbarism or communism. A different set of alternative societal formations is that
of neoliberal or social democratic. The neglect of the social democratic societal alter-
native is a mistake. Social democracy should be included, in general, and also specifi-
cally for the COVID crisis because of the importance of the public health project which
is informed by social democratic principles.
There is a crisis, but its interpretation is not settled. This matters for understanding the
COVID crisis, and the discussion matters for social theory. Interrogating the COVID
crisis can help take forward debates on the place of the concept of ‘crisis’ in social
theory. Developing the concept of crisis and its place in social theory allows for better
understanding of the specificity of the COVID crisis.
The COVID crisis is both real and its contours are socially interpreted. Both aspects of
the crisis coexist and both aspects matter. Over-stating one or the other is counterpro-
ductive for analysis. Agamben underestimated the real aspects of the crisis in which
people were and are dying. Being socially constructed does not negate the possibilities of
a crisis being real at the same time.
In the COVID crisis, increased power has been taken by the executive, which was
legitimated by the state of emergency. These increased powers were both justified and
contested. The extent of parliamentary scrutiny and the mobilisation of criminal sanc-
tions rather than welfare support shows how important is the depth of democracy in
considering the implications of these powers. Agamben is right to draw attention to the
way that a state of emergency is treated as a state of exception in which exceptional
powers are taken by the executive branch of government. While right to ask the question
as to whether these powers were justified, he is wrong to suggest that increased powers
were not justified.
In the COVID crisis, Agamben made contrasts between freedom and authoritarianism
as the main societal alternatives, while ˇ
Ziˇ
zek contrasted barbarism and communism.
Both these sets of alternatives are mistaken. Raising the question as to the alternative
forms of society that might be the outcome of the crisis was correct, but the alternatives
presented were not. Social democracy needs to be added back into the theoretical voca-
bulary when thinking of societal alternatives.
The COVID crisis is a potential critical turning point. But it is not over yet. It may be
the case that there is a recuperation back to pre-COIVD forms of society; the social
democratic moment of Keynesian support for the economy may end. It may become a
catastrophe in which millions more die. It may be a turning point to intensified neoli-
beralism with outsourcing of previously state-run health institutions; it may be a turning
point to social democracy as grassroots initiatives coalesce with reinvigorated party
16 European Journal of Social Theory XX(X)
politics. It is more likely, but not certain, that it is not a single critical turning point, but
the start of a prolonged series of linked crises, which cascade through economic reces-
sion, intensified cleavages in civil society, political and constitutional crisis, to violence.
Theorising these forms of change requires complex systems analysis, which can address
the non-linear forms of change involved (Walby, 2007, 2015).
Conclusion
Social democracy should be included in the discussions of the COVID crisis in contrast
to neoliberalism. Social democracy is a project, form of governance and societal forma-
tion, in which if one is sick, we are all potentially sick, a risk to one is a risk to all, so
solidaristic provision of welfare to support the infected and possibly infected is both
efficient and just simultaneously. It contrasts with neoliberalism that permits the poor,
the old and the minoritised to bear the brunt of the crisis. In science, social democracy is
represented in public health institutions and practices, in comparison with ‘herd immu-
nity’. In the crisis, social democracy is relevant to the Keynesian style economic inter-
vention to prevent the cascade of the crisis, in comparison with the neoliberal
outsourcing of health and social care services.
COVID illuminates debates on the relationship between individuals and society and
the alternative forms that society can take. Delanty offers an agenda setting review of the
zero-sum approaches of political philosophers from utilitarian, Kantian and libertarian
perspectives on justice. Agamben offers a contrast of freedom and authoritarianism.
ˇ
Ziˇ
zek offers a choice between barbarism and communism as future forms of society.
But the range of societal alternatives should go beyond Agamben and ˇ
Ziˇ
zek to include
social democracy and its ‘other’, neoliberalism. The assumption that state intervention is
intrinsically regressive is challenged by public health initiatives in which risks are shared
and the sick and the potentially sick are cared for. The significance of the social dem-
ocratic alternative vision, powerfully articulated through public health, has been under-
estimated in social theory.
COVID illuminates the nature of crisis for social theory. COVID generated not only a
health emergency but an economic recession and a contested restructuring of the polit-
ical economy of health, with an ongoing cascade of the crisis through societal domains.
Although Agamben is right to understand that the COVID crisis is used to legitimate an
extension of state powers, he is mistaken to ignore the real aspects of the crisis in death
and sickness. There is no need to create mutually exclusive alternatives of the socially
constructed and the real in a crisis; both coexist simultaneously. The setting up of
freedom and authoritarianism as the main axis of difference is not appropriate. It is
important to contrast the neoliberal and social democratic mobilisation of state power.
The crisis is a potential critical turning point between these societal forms, though it is
still cascading. Complex systems thinking aids the theorisation of these non-linear forms
of social change.
This discussion builds on the debates in political philosophy about COVID and
society identified by Delanty, concerning the relationship between individuals and soci-
ety and the conceptions of justice embedded in these, which contrasted libertarian and
authoritarian approaches. This article identifies the contestation between social
Walby 17
democracy and neoliberalism as a further axis of debate relevant to COVID. Social
democracy offers a different way of thinking of the relationship of individual and
society; it is not a zero-sum concept of justice; if anyone is sick, we are all potentially
sick. Social democracy is missing as a project, form of governance and type of social
formation. It is missing in the accounts of science, where contesting approaches are not
simply reducible to power. It is missing in the accounts of the variety of forms of
governance that contest COVID and its impact on individuals and on society. It is
missing in the theorisation of the relationship between individual and society, as a form
of political philosophy that does not position the good of the individual and the good of
the whole as a zero-sum game but rather understands the relationship of the good of each
person and the good of the whole. The debate between libertarian and authoritarian
positions is not the only one of relevance. The contestation between social democratic
and neoliberal forms of society and governance in the COVID crisis is also central to
debates in social theory.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank those who have discussed these issues and this article with me, including
Gerard Delanty, Heidi Gottfried, Celia Lury, Sally McManus, Sue Penna and Karen Shire.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/
or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this
article.
ORCID iD
Sylvia Walby https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9696-6947
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Author biography
Sylvia Walby, OBE, is a professor of sociology and the director of the Violence and Society Centre
at City, University of London, London, UK. She is the fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences,
UK, and the chair of the Sociology Sub-Panel for the UK’s Research Excellence Framework 2021.
She has published on rethinking the concept of society and the analysis of societal transformation
using complex systems thinking, including Globalization and Inequalities: Complexity and Con-
tested Modernities (Sage, 2009) and Crisis (Polity, 2015). Recent work focuses on including vio-
lence in a theory of society. Website: www.city.ac.uk/people/academics/sylvia-walby.
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