Will Coronavirus revolutionize the role of governments?

Ronald Reagan's wise saying in 1986, “The most frightening words in English are: I'm from the government, and I'm here to help, and I'm here to help.

In most of the world, people are desperate for the government to be as strong as possible and to rise to the challenge created by the pandemic of the coronary. Reagan's stand on government was solidified in a form of Orthodoxy for more than three decades, particularly spreading abroad to Great Britain with the help of Margaret Thatcher and occupying the central political scene in both countries.

Antipathy to the state was selective: Reagan, like Donald Trump today, caused large budget deficits, spent a lot of funds in the defence sector, and built a corporate welfare system through subsidies and tax cuts.

But on both sides of the Atlantic, the dominant thought was that the state should not interfere with business work, in an effort to control inequality, and provide services to those less fortunate. There are already some signs that the shock caused by Covid-19 could challenge these approaches.

Disease and mass unemployment have always been more capable of supporting the cause of great governance than any party manifesto. And, the current crisis, it's not likely to be an exception. Some sociologists and historians argue that this pandemic could turn into a turning point in social history, comparable to the New Deal Agreement in the United States, or to postwar lab governments in Great Britain.

We've been in this kind of trajectory for the last 30 years, where the individual started to take priority over the collective. And we're already back in the spirit with which our parents and grandparents grew up, where communities should become together”, says Fiona Hill, British-born historian who served at Donald Trump's National Security Council.

Hill showed the case of Great Britain, where 750 thousand people were registered as volunteers to serve in the National Health Service (NHS), and that of a wave of climate activism on both sides of the Atlantic. “I think that among young people, there is a great appetite for asking for more action on the part of the government. I think we can really start seeing the return of the” tendency, Hill said.

Some of the biggest shocks in public opinion have occurred in countries where the state's role in social welfare has had a faster appeal. The US and Great Britain are more prominent in this respect, as when the pandemic appeared their governments were aiming to rely on their old social welfare systems, and are already trying to reevaluate their versions.

What remains unclear is whether these measures will disappear as soon as David-19 is brought under control, to the extent that people can get back to work, or if some of them will continue to stay in force. Coronervirus' pandemic, meanwhile, can strengthen statistics of a different kind -- more Big Brother than a Great Society -- by providing a disguise for governments to limit civil liberties and strengthen their power, as Viktor Orban has done in Hungary.

There are still few signs that China's leaders will be held responsible for their failure to control the epidemic in its source, and Beijing's reaction to criticism has been further oppression of critical voices and science. Pandemia has also brought an increase in digital population monitoring, for which many citizens fear it will become a permanent monitoring system.

Strengthening state power may be accompanied by a broader offering of public services, or progress on them. The less a government does for its citizens, the more it needs to control the latter. In the US, the Trump administration will likely face resistance if it aims to cancel social assistance forms that have long been standard in most Western democracies.

“Pandemia, has dismissed all social security network in the United States”, says John Schmitt, deputy chairman of the Institute of Economic Policy in Washington. “A very fundamental aspect in any other advanced economy in the world guarantees workers at least a minimum amount of paid working days when they are sick. The U.S. has no such laws at the national level. I find it hard to imagine, so there's not a considerable support, in terms where state and federal legislation have long failed in this regard”, he thinks.

Schmitt says there are two more areas where there will be a strong demand for sustainable changes. One is ensuring unemployment, for which there is currently a weak action of various state systems, subjecting to minimum national standards. The other is the health care system. As many Americans face bankruptcy, because they have partial insurance, or are completely free of health insurance, Trump will find it harder to continue his efforts to destroy the Obama Administration Health Care Act, which expanded the area of health insurance coverage, and could provide support for a more ambitious expansion of government-funded healthcare.

For parallel reasons, it will be even more difficult on the political level for Boris Johnson to negotiate the NHS bases in business talks with Washington, as this system saved him life. It is too early to predict, how the shock caused by the coronary will affect the outcome of this year's US elections.

With all other things in balance -- a greater popularity for a government-funded social security network -- should be translated into more votes for Democrats, who traditionally have defended such policies.

But, Trump will aim to regain ground, insisting for example that his name be found in the 600-dollar checks the federal government is sending to Americans every week to meet financial benefits as a result of unemployment. And elections can be just as much about cultural and political loyalty as about social policies.

Sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild, who has written extensively on American right, said he is monitoring reactions to the recent crisis in Kentucky. “Trump supporters are generally elderly and in poor health. And if they're of the working class, they're actually less likely to have jobs that they can do from home. What has happened in this short period of time has challenged many of the beliefs they defend and believe”, she points out.

Despite that, she says, the crisis seemed to have had little effect on political identification and affiliation. There is no immediate twist in American attitudes. I think they'll vote for Trump, almost at the same rate as in the president of 2016”.

If Trump is re-elected, very few analysts believe there will be major and sustainable changes in the state's role in the economy. Its instincts have been the delivery of leadership during the crisis to executive directors of large corporations, listing them in the Rose Garden, when it declared on March 13th the state of national emergency.

Meanwhile, opinions differ if a democrat administration under John Beden would make transformational changes. “We are seeing a narrower alliance between the left and the centre of the Democratic Party”- says Theda Skocpol, professor of sociologistry at Harvard University.

If the Democrats are going to control the Senate as well, she adds: “I think this would mark the transition to a stage where there would be a real change in leadership, the first important since the era of Reagan. Dean Baker, co-founder of the Centre for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, argues that it was a crisis that showed how fragile the economic system was to shock, regardless of who is in government.

“Today, the thought that we had this terrible experience then dominates, and now everyone will learn from it: it wasn't really true in 2008-09, and I don't really believe it will be true this time”, Baker adds. Much may depend on the depth and duration of the shock caused by the coronary pandemic.

As the weeks go by, a rapid recovery in V-shaped economic growth seems unlikely, while a more real scenario seems a gradual recovery in the form of a U or even a prolonged economic depression. In such circumstances, earlier unimaginable solutions can become more enjoyable.

People use the analogy of the financial crisis, but I think this is wrong. War is much better, as it creates at the same time supply and a shock to the target side of <x2x1>, says Branko Milanovic, economist at the University of New York City, adding that a prolonged economic downturn would lead to “definition of the role of”.

However, it warns that very likely a basis for support for a universal health care system, and a much stronger social security network, may not be reflected in the US political system. He adds: The “that we can face in reality in the United States is an increasingly large gap between the demand for change, and the total lack of change”. /Buriment: Guardian Weekly/In Albanian from: world.al/