The Politics of Pandemic Preparedness

The COVID-19 pandemic underscored the urgent need to strengthen preparedness for future health crises. Experts emphasize reassessing global governance frameworks such as the WHO and the International Health Regulations (2005), as well as reforming vaccine and medical supply production systems at both domestic and global levels. Cross-border financial and technical cooperation is essential, particularly from high-income countries toward low-income nations and international organizations. However, large-scale investments in preparedness are difficult to sustain without public support.

In democracies, political leaders find preparedness unattractive to pursue because its benefits are intangible and often subject to criticism as wasteful spending. While COVID-19 may have initially heightened public awareness and interest, concern about future pandemics appears to have faded as the crisis receded – even in countries where the virus had not disappeared. Furthermore, the pandemic revealed that politics can obstruct effective responses even in countries previously rated as well-prepared, yet our understanding of the role of politics in pandemic management remains limited.

This project addresses two main objectives:

First, it examines the political challenges of building robust pandemic preparedness by tracking how public concern and awareness evolve as a pandemic recedes and identifying the factors that shape these attitudes.

Second, it investigates the political role of preparedness during a pandemic, focusing on how border control capacity may affect public attitudes toward response measures.

The project aims to produce three research papers and contribute insights relevant to public health policy, the politicization of pandemics, and pandemic governance.