The Coronavirus Pandemic and Neoliberalism

Document Type : Analytic Review

Author
PhD Student of International Relations, Department of Law, Theology and Political Science, Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran.
Abstract
The caused rapid spread of the Coronavirus, or Covid-19, has a pandemic with effects beyond health-related issues. Scientists a referred to this "total as social reality," event profoundly as it has changed our daily lives and behavior, and has had, will continue to have, far-reaching economic and political impacts. This article seeks to show how the Corona epidemic has affected neoliberalism, which has become one of the dominant discourses of international relations and governments since the 1980s. Library sources and analytical-descriptive method were used to conduct this research. The results of this article show that the Corona pandemic has revealed the moral vacuum and economic failures at the heart of the neoliberalism-based "development" model that has dominated global economic relations since the 1980s. Rather than putting politics and economics at the service of citizens, neoliberalism has forced workers to serve the needs of the market. At the same time, neoliberalism has discriminated public services, especially health care, against in the face of the coronavirus challenge

Keywords

Subjects


Abbasi, Kamran. (2020). Covid-19: politicisation,“corruption,” and suppression of science. BMJ: British Medical Journal (Online). https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4425.
Algarín, Evaristo Barrera, Francisco Estepa Maestre , José Luís Sarasola-Sánchez Serrano, and Ana Vallejo Andrada. (2020). "COVID-19, neoliberalism and health systems in 30 European countries: relationship to deceases." Rev Esp Salud Pública 1-15.
Alteri, Luca, Louisa Parks, Luca Raffini, and Tommaso Vitale. (2021). "Covid-19 and the Structural Crisis of Liberal Democracies. Determinants and Consequences of the Governance of Pandemic." Partecipazione e conflitto 14 (1): 1-37.
Alwan, Nisreen, and et al. (2020). "Scientific consensus on the COVID-19 pandemic: we need to act now." The Lancet 396: e71-e72. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)32153-X/fulltext#:~:text=It%20is%20critical%20to%20act,been%20amplified%20by%20the%20pandemic.
Aschwanden, Christie. (2020). "The false promise of herd immunity for COVID-19." Nature 26-28.
Beals, Ann Marie, and et al. (2023). The COVID-19 Crisis: Using the Cracks in Neoliberalism for Social Transformation Towards a More Just Society. Global Journal of Community Psychology Practice. https://www.gjcpp.org/en/article.php?issue=45&article=279.
Braw, Elizabeth. (2020). The EU Is Abandoning Italy in Its Hour of Need. Foreign Policy.
Bremmer, Ian. (2020). We Are in a Geopolitical Recession. That’s a Bad Time for the Global Coronavirus Crisis. Time. https://time.com/5802033/geopolitical-recession-global-crisis/.
Casarões, Guilherme, and David Magalhães. (2021). "The hydroxychloroquine alliance: how far-right leaders and alt-science preachers came together to promote a miracle drug." Revista de Administração Pública 55: 197-214.
CDC. (2019). 1918 Pandemic (H1N1 virus). Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases (NCIRD).
Chalk, James. (2021). "Neoliberalism and personal freedoms during COVID-19." Journal of Global Faultlines 8 (1): 91-99.
Chowdhury, Dey, Muhammed Khaliq, Ginevra Okoye, and Libby Abrahams. (2022). Effects of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic on "high-contact" industries. Office for National Statistics.
Cronin, Patrick M, Michael Doran, and Peter Rough. (2020). Geopolitical Implications of the Coronavirus. Geopolitical Implications of the Coronavirus. https://www.hudson.org/national-security-defense/geopolitical-implications-of-the-coronavirus.
Das, Subasish. (2021). "Impact of COVID-19 on industries." In COVID-19 in the Environment, by Deepak Rawtani, Chaudhery Mustansar Hussain and Nitasha Khatri, 191-200. Elsevier.
Fox, Ashley, Vikram Patel, and Robert Yates. (2021). As the COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated, universal health coverage (UHC) is a goal that the world can’t afford to miss. Webinar Engage in the political economy of universal health coverage.
Friedman, Milton. (1951). "Neo-Liberalism and its Prospects." Farmand 89-93.
Gaffney, Adam. (2020). America's extreme neoliberal healthcare system is putting the country at risk. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/21/medicare-for-all-coronavirus-covid-19-single-payer.
Haren, Pierre, and David Simchi-Levi. (2020). "How Coronavirus Could Impact the Global Supply Chain by Mid-March." Harvard Business Review.
Hasan, Ali. (2020). Capitalism Versus Coronavirus. The Intercept.
Heenan, Natasha, and Anna Sturman. (2020). "Labor, nature, capitalism and COVID-19." Journal of Australian Political Economy 193-199.
Horgan, John. (2020). The Coronavirus and Right-Wing Postmodernism. Scientific American. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/the-coronavirus-and-right-wing-postmodernism/.
Kalu, Bernard. (2020). COVID-19 in Nigeria: a disease of hunger. The Lancet. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanres/article/PIIS2213-2600(20)30220-4/fulltext.
Lerner, Sharon. (2020). Coronavirus numbers reflect New York City’s deep economic divide. The Intercept. https://theintercept.com/2020/04/09/nyc-coronavirus-deaths-race-economic-divide/.
Maldonado, Luis Kato, and Guadalupe Huerta Moreno. (2020). "COVID-19 and the Hyper-Crisis of Neoliberalism: The Breakdown of Financialization." Briq 1 (3): 81-91.
Mason, Paul. (2020). Will coronavirus signal the end of capitalism? Al Jazeera. https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2020/4/3/will-coronavirus-signal-the-end-of-capitalism/.
Matthewman, Steve, and Kate Huppatz. (2020). "A sociology of Covid-19." Journal of Sociology 56 (4): 1-9.
McNally, Alan. (2020). Backers of ‘herd immunity ‘shouldn’t have been allowed near Boris Johnson. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/dec/14/herd-immunity-boris-johnson-coronavirus.
Michell, Jo. (2020). Coronavirus Reveals the Cost of Austerity. Tribune. https://tribunemag.co.uk/2020/04/coronavirus-reveals-the-cost-of-austerity.
Mirowski, Philip, and Dieter Plehwe. (2009). The road from Mont Pèlerin: the making of the neoliberal thought. Harvard University Press.
Mitropoulos, Angela. (2020). Pandemonium: Proliferating borders of capital and the pandemic swerve. Pluto Press.
Navarro, Vicente. (2022). "The Consequences of Neoliberalism in the Current Pandemic." International Journal of Health Services 50 (3): 271–275.
Neilson, David. (2021). "Reversing the catastrophe of neoliberal-led global capitalism in the time of coronavirus: Towards a democratic socialist alternative." Capital & Class 45 (2): 191-213.
Neilson, David. (2022). "Learning for the Future beyond COVID-19: A Critical Alternative to the Neoliberal Model of Development." Societies 12 (32): 1-14.
Nune, João. (2020). "The COVID-19 pandemic: securitization, neoliberal crisis, and global vulnerabilization." Cad. Saúde Pública 36 (4).
Ølgaard, D. (2020). Reflections on Naomi Klein’s pandemic shock doctrine. E-International Relations, 74-75. https://www.e-ir.info/2020/09/15/reflections-on-naomi-kleins-pandemic-shock-doctrine/.
Pearse, William. (2021). A Critique of Neoliberalism. The Career Site For Economists. https://inomics.com/insight/a-critique-of-neoliberalism-1379580.
Peters, Charles. (1982). A Neo-Liberal's Manifesto. The Washington Post. https://coreyrobin.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Charles-Peters-Neoliberalism.pdf.
Peterson , Chris L, and Christine Walker. (2022). "Universal health care and political economy, neoliberalism and effects of COVID-19: A view of systems and complexity." J Eval Clin Pract 28 (2): 338-340.
Rezaei Eskandari, Davood. (2005) "The evolution of the concept of the state in theories of international relations." Strategic Studies Quarterly 8 (1): 106-134.
Risager, Bjarke Skærlund. (2016). Neoliberalism Is a Political Project: An Interview with David Harvey. Jacobin. https://jacobin.com/2016/07/david-harvey-neoliberalism-capitalism-labor-crisis-resistance/.
Rodrik, Dani. (2017). “The fatal flaw of neoliberalism: it's bad economics. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/nov/14/the-fatal-flaw-of-neoliberalism-its-bad-economics.
Rostamali, Reihaneh, Hourieh Dehghan Puri, and Hadi Bagheri. (2022) "Developments and strategies of the sports tourism industry during the covid-19 epidemic." Research in sports management and movement behavior 12 (24): 154-177.
Sachs, Jeffrey. (2020). The Trump administration's ludicrous approach to coronavirus vaccine. CNN.
Saunders, Robert. (2020). There is such a thing as society: has Boris Johnson repudiated Thatcherism? The New Statesman. https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2020/03/boris-johnson-thatcher-society-no-such-thing-policies.
Sim, B. (2021). London hospitals in ‘serious’ situation with 800 new COVID-19 patients admitted daily. Financial News. https://www.ft.com/content/6bf817cf-9ee6-4231-8f04-e86ae68bf0c6.
Solty, Ingar. (2021). "The Five Opportunities of the Covid-19 Bio-Economic Pandemic." In Beyond Capitalism and Neoliberalism, by Vesna Stanković Pejnović, 72-83. Belgrade: Institute for Political Studies.
Vidovic, Luka. (2022). Industries Most and Least Impacted by COVID-19 from a Probability of Default Perspective - January 2022 Update. S&P Global Market Intelligence. https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights/blog/industries-most-and-least-impacted-by-covid-19-from-a-probability-of-default-perspective-january-2022-update.
West, Cornel. (2016). Goodbye, American Neoliberalism. A New Era is Here”. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/17/american-neoliberalism-cornel-west-2016-election.
Wheeler, Duncan. (2020). Vox in the Age of Covid-19. Journal of International Affairs, 173-184. https://jia.sipa.columbia.edu/vox-age-covid-19-populist-protest-turn-spanish-politics.
Wood, Zoe. (2020). Tesco defends £635m dividend payout after coronavirus tax break. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/apr/08/tesco-sales-up-30-per-cent-because-of-pre-lockdown-stockpiling-coronavirus.
Wright, Bruce C.T. (2020). U.S. Accused Of Stealing Ventilators From Barbados As Coronavirus Spreads in The Caribbean. news one. https://newsone.com/3924158/barbados-accuses-us-ventilators-seized/.
Yamada, Seiji. (2020). Neoliberalism and the Coronavirus. Counterpunch.
Yong, Ed. (2020). The UK’s coronavirus ‘herd immunity ‘debacle. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/03/coronavirus-pandemic-herd-immunity-uk-boris-johnson/608065/.