This book brings together studies from various locations to examine the growing social problems that have been brought to the fore by the COVID-19 outbreak. Employing both qualitative, theoretical and quantitative methods, it presents the impact of the pandemic in different settings, shedding light on political and cultural realities around the world. With attention to inequalities rooted in race and ethnicity, economic conditions, gender, disability, and age, it considers different forms of marginalization and examines the ongoing disjunctions that increasingly characterize contemporary democracies from a multilevel perspective. The book addresses original analyses and approaches from a global perspective on the COVID-19 pandemic, its governance, and its effects in different geographies. These analyses are organized around three main axes: 1) how COVID-19 pandemic worsened social, racial/ethnic, and economic inequalities, including variables such as migration status, gender, and disability; 2) how the pandemic impacted youth and how younger generations cope with public health alarms, and containment measures; 3) how the pandemic posed a challenge to democracy, reshaped the political agenda, and the debate in the public sphere. Contributions from around the world show how local and national issues may overlap on a global scale, laying the foundation for connected sociologies. Based on qualitative as well as quantitative empirical analysis on various categories of individuals and groups, this edited volume reflects on the sociological aspects of current planetary crises which will continue to be at the core of our societies. A wide-ranging, international volume that focuses on both unexpected social changes and new forms of agency in response to a period of crisis, Inequalities, Youth, Democracy and the Pandemic will appeal to scholars with interests in the sociology of health, social problems and inequalities.

Young people are very often the driving forces of political participation that aims to change societies and political systems. Rather than being depoliticized, young people in different national contexts are giving rise to alternative politics. Drawing on original survey data collected in 2018, this edited volume provides a detailed analysis of youth participation in nine European countries by focusing on socialization processes, different modes of participation and the mobilization of youth politics. "This volume is an indispensable guide to understanding young European’s experience and engagement of politics, the inequalities that shape young people’s political engagement and are sometimes replicated through them, and young people’s commitment to saving the environment and spreading democratic ideals. Based on compelling and extensive research across nine nations, this volume makes important advances in key debates on youth politics and provides critical empirical insights into which young people engage, influences on young people’s politics, how young people engage, why some young people don’t engage, and trends across nations. The volume succeeds in the herculean task of focusing on specific national contexts while also rendering a comprehensive picture of youth politics and inequality in Europe today." —Jennifer Earl, Professor of Sociology, University of Arizona, USA "Forecasts by social scientists of young people’s increasingly apathetic stance towards political participation appear to have been misplaced. This text, drawing data and analysis across and between nine European countries, captures the changing nature of political ‘activism’ by young people. It indicates how this is strongly nuanced by factors such as social class and gender identity. It also highlights important distinctions between young people’s approaches towards more traditional (electoral) and more contemporary (non-institutional) forms of participation. Critically, it illuminates the many ways in which youth political participation has evolved and transformed in recent years. Wider social circumstances and experiences are identified as highly significant in preparing young people for, and influencing their levels of participation in, both protest-oriented action and electoral politics." —Howard Williamson, Professor of European Youth Policy, University of South Wales, UK "This book is an incredible guide to understanding the role and sources of inequalities on young people’s political involvement. Country specific chapters allow the authors to integrate a large number of the key and most pressing issues regarding young people’s relationship to politics in a single volume. Topics range from social mobility and the influence of socioeconomic (parental) resources and class; young people’s practice in the social sphere; the intersection of gender with other sources of inequalities; online participation and its relationship with social inequalities; the impact of harsh economic conditions; the mobilization potential of the environmental cause; to the role of political organizations. Integrating all these pressing dimensions in a common framework and accompanying it with extensive novel empirical evidence is a great achievement and the result is a must read piece for researchers and practitioners aiming to understand the challenges young people face in developing their relationship to politics." —Gema García-Albacete, Associate Professor of Political Science, University Carlos III Madrid, Spain

Folk Devils and Moral Panics in the COVID-19 Pandemic analyses the phenomena of moral panics surrounding so-called folk devils in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. In this volume, internationally recognised moral panic scholars from disciplines including sociology, media studies, criminology, and cultural studies examine case studies of moral panics related to the COVID-19 pandemic. These analyses consider the different social, political, economic, organisational, and cultural contexts within which such moral panics emerged and assess how the concept of moral panic can be deployed to offer novel insights into sociocultural responses to the outbreak. By utilising both classical approaches to moral panic analysis and more recent trends, chapters discuss the utility of the concept of moral panic that is, for the first time, applied to a global-scale event like the COVID-19 pandemic. This volume will be of interest to students and scholars in the social sciences with an interest in moral panics, responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the media and popular culture.

This volume explores how researchers made innovative use of online technologies to innovate, define, and transform research methodologies in light of the varying impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, especially those related to the ability to conduct qualitative research. The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a radical shift in the way that people all over the world were/have been able to live, work, study, and conduct their daily lives. Academics and other professionals who routinely engage in research were no exception. The sudden, continued, and uneven need for health mandates calling for physical distancing added a particular layer of complexity for those who used research methods that typically required face-to-face interactions. Continued technological developments associated with the Internet had already given rise to ongoing debates on innovative methodological thinking and practices. The COVID-19 pandemic has further accentuated how indispensable the internet has become for the private and public lives of those with access to it, including for their employment, education, leisure, and social interactions. For those fortunate enough to have access to them, communication software such as Zoom and Google Meet have also become indispensable digital resources for researchers seeking to continue conducting research during lockdowns and quarantines, and beyond. More than ever, researchers are finding it useful, even necessary, to equip themselves with online research tools in order to be able to continue conducting their fieldwork. Drawing on research and case studies from around the world, this volume serves as a guidebook for those interested in attuning their own research methods to a world still struggling to grapple with the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.

There are various challenges to democracy which have worsened during the Covid-19 pandemic. Some countries have experienced democratic backsliding and other problems from the perspective of democratic participation, human rights and the rule of law. To discuss these issues in the context of the Philippines, a webinar entitled ‘Democracy Talks in Manila: The Role of Youth Voices in Democracy’ was organized in December 2020 by the Embassy of Sweden in Manila, International IDEA and the Program on Social and Political Change at the University of the Philippines Center for Integrative and Development Studies (UP CIDS). The webinar was part of the Swedish Government’s Drive for Democracy initiative, and among the participants were students, youth leaders and youth advocates of democracy and human rights.

Classical liberalism regarded universal suffrage as a mortal threat to property. So what explains the advent of liberal democracy, and how stable today is the marriage between representative government and the continued rule of capital? Across every continent, people think inequality is a 'very big problem'. Even the Davos Economic Forum and the OECD say they are worried. And yet capitalist states don't respond. How has democracy been transformed from a popular demand for social justice into a professional power game? To dispel our worsening political malaise, Gran Therborn argues, requires a 'disruptive democracy' of radical social movements, such as the climate strike. Inequality and the Labyrinths of Democracy opens with a major new essay mapping the social fractures of the present era. There is also a compact historical survey of worldwide patterns of democratization and a landmark analysis of the OECD economies, 'The Rule of Capital and the Rise of Democracy', originally published in New Left Review and collected here in book form for the first time.

Democracy is in distress! The Secretary General of the 47-nation Council of Europe, Marija Pejčinović Burić, has highlighted a “clear and worrying degree of democratic backsliding” in her latest annual report on the state of democracy, human rights and the rule of law across the continent. “In many cases, the problems we are seeing predate the coronavirus pandemic but there is no doubt that legitimate actions taken by national authorities in response to Covid-19 have compounded the situation. The danger is that our democratic culture will not fully recover,” said the Secretary General. “Our member states now face a choice. They can continue to permit or facilitate this democratic backsliding or they can work together to reverse this trend, to reinforce and renew European democracy and to create an environment in which human rights and the rule of law flourish. “This is the right option for the 830 million people who live in the Council of Europe area.” Based on the findings of different Council of Europe bodies, including the European Court of Human Rights, the Secretary General’s report assesses recent developments in areas including political institutions and judicial independence, freedom of expression and association, human dignity, anti-discrimination and democratic participation. The report encourages member states to use existing and future Council of Europe mechanisms to address many of the challenges identified, on the basis of the following key principles: - National authorities should return to fundamental democratic principles and recommit to Council of Europe legal standards, including the implementation of judgments from the European Court of Human Rights; - Member states should fully embrace the multilateralism embodied by the Council of Europe for more than 70 years; - Covid-related restrictions and measures must not only be necessary and proportionate, but also limited in duration; - National authorities should embrace democratic culture, recognising where their words, activities or legislation have diminished that culture by reducing civic space, by intimidating or preventing individuals, organisations and NGOs from exercising their freedom of speech or assembly, or by excluding people from participating fully in society.

How might we think about the COVID-19 pandemic from the lens of inequality? How might such an analysis look when writing from Lahore or Abuja as compared to writing from London or San Francisco? How can it help us rethink our role as advocates and members of civil society, as well as our forms of solidarity? This book explores these questions through the narratives of young human rights advocates from the global South—from Nigeria to the Philippines to India to Chile. The authors discuss the latent structural inequalities that the pandemic has deepened, exposed, or suppressed, as well as those that broke people’s already fragile trust in governments, the private sector, and civil society organizations. They also explore the strategies of resilience and creative social organizing that have helped confront the pandemic around the globe. The contributors to this book, writing from different perspectives, invite us to consider what we can learn from the interplay between the pandemic and inequality in order to spur a creative reorientation of collective mobilization and advocacy toward the future.

This book assesses the progress in the implementation of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in ASEAN, India and China using the above framework conditions in the context with three main propositions. First, translating the SDGs into regional economic integration strategies during the pandemic recovery can enhance the link between global objectives and the multifaceted reality of an ASEAN community building process, and providing a strategic option to strengthen the regional approaches. Secondly, a regional approach on complementarities to SDGs can facilitate the definition of relevant targets/indicators and enhance the monitoring and evaluation framework. In so doing it could also offer the scope to integrate more closely ASEAN community’s social and environmental concerns into existing economic, social and political frameworks. Thirdly, focusing just on the geo-economic sphere – the area where south east and East Asian economic integration is relatively more advanced – will prove the hypothesis that effective regional integration through mega trade agreements such as the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) can support the Asia’s transformation agenda and foster more inclusive and sustainable growth.