Will COVID-19 Mark the End of European Liberalism?

Understandably, given its potential for large scale loss of life and severe economic disruption, coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic has so far focused on its short-term health and economic impact. Eventually, however, we will have to start thinking about the longer-term repercussions of the virus—particularly its political fall-out. According to the social science literature, there appears to be a positive correlation between the prevalence of disease and an increase in authoritarian-nationalist political views.1 This could have important ramifications in continental Europe, where several of the countries at the epicentre of...