Polarization and the Pandemic

After an electoral campaign based on harsh attacks against a notoriously corrupt political establishment, in late 2018 the far-right populist Jair Bolsonaro was elected president of Brazil. Reasoning that he would not retain popular support unless he stuck to this confrontational strategy, as president Bolsonaro has relentlessly assaulted mainstream political parties, major media outlets, and Brazil’s Congress and Supreme Court. When the coronavirus hit Brazil in earnest in March, Bolsonaro was confident that this same strategy would carry him through. Taking an initial cue from U.S. President Donald Trump, he dismissed the virus as a hoax, refused to consider a national social distancing policy, and went so far as to recommend risky self-medication approaches.

But as mayors in large Brazilian cities and governors in the most affected states began to impose quarantines, using powers constitutionally guaranteed under Brazil’s federal system, the president went on the offensive. He called coronavirus infections “sniffles,” claimed that his background as an athlete would ensure his good health, and refused to release his own test results. (Twenty-three members of his entourage tested positive after returning from a visit to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence.) Bolsonaro has repeatedly attacked social distancing measures, saying that deaths are a fact of life and should not stand in the way of restarting the economy.

In March, as the coronavirus began spreading widely throughout the country, overwhelming an already broken healthcare system, Bolsonaro’s popularity began to suffer. Across quarantined Brazil, people regularly banged pots and pans in protest against the president every evening. By mid-April, polls showed that 38 percent of Brazilians regarded the government’s performance as “excellent” or “good,” as opposed to 56 percent who saw it as “regular,” “poor,” or “bad.”

And yet Bolsonaro has stuck to his original plan. Within his inner circle, advisers fear that any policy that associates Bolsonaro with establishment individuals or institutions will come back to haunt him at the ballot box. In one of his riskiest decisions to date, in April Bolsonaro sacked the popular minister of health, a figure who had become a champion of the national health service and social distancing measures.

Key in Bolsonaro’s calculations are the economic consequences of social distancing policies. According to estimates from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, Brazil’s economy could shrink by up to 6 percent over the rest of 2020. For Bolsonaro, such a recession could spell ruin in the upcoming municipal elections this October, in which Brazilians will elect more than 5,000 mayors. Seeking to keep the economy afloat, Bolsonaro has appeared on television daily to ask people to go back to work and reopen the economy, and he has begun to blame mayors and governors for the economic collapse that now seems inevitable.

Bolsonaro’s incendiary response to the pandemic has brought polarization in Brazil to a level not seen in decades. The president has all but declared war on Congress, the courts, the press, and now the mayors and governors who are imposing social distancing policies. In the early days of April alone, the intensifying political struggle saw members of parliament vote down government legislation, courts block administration requests, and the major media outlets cast Bolsonaro as unhinged. Against the president’s wishes, Congress passed legislation to provide poorer Brazilians with monthly stipends (of around $120). Bolsonaro has fought back by mobilizing his base, with many supporters now taking to the streets, even if that means blocking the passage of ambulances. Pro-Bolsonaro bots and social media influencers have launched daily attacks against the speaker of the lower house of Congress, Rodrigo Maia, now a leading voice opposing the president. And in late April, Sergio Moro, a judge with a strong anticorruption record whose popularity rating in polls has over the last year been higher than Bolsonaro’s, clashed with the president and resigned as justice minister.

The spread of the coronavirus will be a watershed moment in Bolsonaro’s presidency. But perhaps more importantly, it also will mark a new, troubling chapter in the trajectory of a country that is becoming ever more polarized.

Matias Spektor is associate professor of international relations at the School of International Relations at Fundação Getulio Vargas in Brazil.

Immediately prior to the coronavirus pandemic, Chile was in the midst of its most serious political turmoil since its return to democracy in the late 1980s. Simmering discontent over the country’s socioeconomic inequality, corruption, and deficient state services prompted massive protests and widespread looting in October 2019. Previously, Chile had been considered a model of prosperity and democracy in Latin America, and its precipitous descent into chaos caught most people—in particular, President Sebastián Piñera and his center-right administration—by surprise.

Chile’s mass protests, which extended well into 2020, inaugurated a period of intense political and societal polarization. In response to the protests, Piñera deployed the armed forces to reinforce police units, yet pervasive abuses by security forces against the protesters only exacerbated political tensions. Although Piñera announced structural reforms aimed at containing the unrest, the limited nature of these efforts reinforced the public perception that the government was more interested in repression than in substantive solutions to societal demands. Furthermore, recriminations among the political parties aggravated and exposed deep societal divisions over the legacies of Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship, and the devastating economic effects of Chile’s upheaval only intensified disagreements.

As Chileans anxiously braced themselves for a resumption of the protests following a brief summer hiatus, the coronavirus outbreak unexpectedly brought a respite to a restless society. After the government introduced social distancing measures, protests quickly fizzled, enabling what one astute observer described as a “fragile new social truce.” Yet the lull seems to owe much more to the population’s fear of contracting the virus and collective exhaustion after months of turmoil than to satisfaction with how the government has handled the crisis and addressed societal grievances. The current truce thus seems to be a transitory phase, and many Chileans fear that once the current rally-around-the-flag effect has weakened, polarization will divide the public once more.

The health crisis has handed the beleaguered Piñera administration a precious opportunity to regain the public’s trust and ease political divisions. At present, it remains too early to evaluate the government’s handling of the crisis, but thus far its response appears to have been effective. The government has introduced stringent measures, such as declaring a state of emergency, closing Chile’s borders, imposing nightly curfews, speeding up testing, and imposing total lockdowns in areas with coronavirus outbreaks. One positive sign for the government is that Piñera’s calamitous 6 percent approval rating has risen to a less immediately dire 21 percent.

However, other aspects of the government’s response, including measures to mitigate the economic effects of the crisis, have been more controversial. Thus far, the government has provided cash transfers to people in the informal sector, postponed employers’ tax payments, and introduced a new law to regulate remote work. Although the government’s supporters lauded this economic package, its detractors argued that powerful interest groups unduly shaped the legislation in ways that favor the business elite and fail to protect vulnerable populations. Another critical issue concerns the government’s decision to postpone a referendum on the creation of an assembly to rewrite Chile’s constitution. The vote, originally scheduled for this April, was the product of a broad, cross-party agreement that helped ease political tensions. With the opposition’s support, the government delayed the referendum until November, but politically charged debates about its feasibility are already emerging.

These points of controversy indicate that the current crisis has not substantially altered preexisting divides or generated a shared vision for the country’s path forward. Opposition leaders and societal groups have been measured in their criticism of the government during the pandemic, but they nevertheless have been disinclined to create a common front with the president and his governing coalition. Their reluctance stems to a significant degree from a deep-seated distrust of Piñera and his supporters, in particular the influential business elite, whom they continue to perceive as out of touch and insincere in their commitment to structural reform. If the crisis lingers, the risk of resurgent polarization seems high.

Andreas E. Feldmann is associate professor in the Latin American and Latino Studies Program and Department of Political Science at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

The coronavirus pandemic struck India at a moment when the country was more polarized than it has been in decades. Particularly since 2019, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi won a landslide reelection victory, he and his government have exacerbated the country’s polarization by advancing a majoritarian, Hindu nationalist agenda. On the surface, the coronavirus has put political animosities on hold, as Modi has toned down his populist and confrontational rhetoric. Yet at the same time, fears surrounding the pandemic have rapidly amplified societal polarization and intolerance, in particular against India’s Muslims.

Although Modi has long loomed as a polarizing figure in Indian politics, during the pandemic he has championed national unity and won broad national support. The prime minister’s signature policy initiative has been a nationwide lockdown—the world’s largest—which began on March 25 and has been extended until at least May 3. Even though the lockdown was announced with just hours’ notice and caused a mass migration of more than 600,000 people walking on foot to reach their villages, a majority of Indians have embraced the prime minister’s policy enthusiastically. Furthermore, Modi has sought to cultivate a feeling of “collective resolve and solidarity” throughout the lockdown, for instance by asking all Indians to clap together in support of essential workers or to light candles at a designated time. Likely as a result of the crisis and his skillful public outreach, Modi’s net approval rating soared to 68 percent in mid-April, up from 62 percent in mid-March. By this token, polarization has at least somewhat receded.

At the broader societal level, however, the pandemic has fueled intolerance and even violence in some instances against the country’s Muslim minority. The catalyst for rapidly growing anti-Muslim sentiment was a single event in mid-March organized by a Muslim missionary movement called Tablighi Jamaat. The group’s event center, or Markaz, rapidly emerged as a major hot spot in India’s coronavirus outbreak. Hundreds of followers, including many foreign nationals, attended the Markaz event, and by mid-April, after weeks of testing and contact tracing, the Indian government had identified more than 4,000 coronavirus cases related to the event, representing almost 30 percent of India’s total confirmed infections.

The Markaz incident fanned the flames of societal polarization in a country where violence against Muslims has erupted as recently as February 2020. The event became a 24/7 subject of conversation on social media and television stations, while bigots exploited the outbreak to paint the entire Muslim community as a vector of disease. “Coronajihad” became the top trending hashtag on Twitter for days; between March 28 and April 3, the incendiary hashtag appeared 300,000 times and was viewed by possibly 300 million people on Twitter. Meanwhile, prominent television channels openly spouted anti-Muslim conspiracy theories, and even many respected print outlets fell into the trap of playing to Islamophobia. The relentless media attention to the event found its way into the health ministry’s daily press briefing, in which the spokesperson regularly cited the number of coronavirus cases linked to the Markaz incident.

This outpouring of hateful rhetoric has translated into an increase in anti-Muslim discrimination and violence across India. Painted as “corona villains” or virus spreaders, Muslims have been beaten and attacked by vigilante groups. After many days of silence, Modi appealed for unity, emphasizing that the virus “doesn’t see religion, language, or borders.” Yet his words have proven largely unable to stem growing intercommunal discord, and in this context, Muslim communities’ deep distrust of the Hindu nationalist government—evident in a series of violent attacks on frontline health workers—has emerged as a potential barrier to providing them with healthcare and containing the spread of the virus to others.

Thus, the pandemic has aggravated the religious polarization that has been intensifying since Modi took office in 2014. Just months before this crisis, in December 2019, Modi’s government passed the discriminatory Citizenship Amendment Act that established religion as a basis for granting citizenship and proposed a National Register of Citizens, fueling fears among many Indian Muslims that their legal citizenship was in jeopardy. Now, at a time when the minority community already was under attack, it must confront a new wave of hatred and stigma.

Niranjan Sahoo is a senior fellow with the Governance and Politics Initiative at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi.

Indonesia has the highest number of coronavirus-related deaths in Asia outside China, and experts agree that official figures significantly underestimate the scale of the unfolding tragedy. The Indonesian government’s response to the virus has been slow and confused, as President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) has failed to provide clear guidelines on social distancing and lockdowns, among other things. The coronavirus hit Indonesia at a time of deepening political polarization between Jokowi’s pluralist coalition and an Islamist-linked opposition. Against this backdrop, the government’s handling of the pandemic has triggered political conflict at the elite level, while at the societal level partisan divisions appear to be coloring public perceptions of the president’s response to the crisis.

The virus quickly ignited a polarizing feud between the president and opposition figures. In March, Anies Baswedan, governor of Jakarta and a figurehead for opposition groups, directly challenged the central government’s data on coronavirus cases and deaths. He claimed that Jakarta was experiencing a more serious level of contagion than national figures suggested, and he announced plans to lock down the capital to slow the spread of the virus. Hardline Islamist organizations that have long opposed Jokowi quickly rallied around Anies and called for an immediate lockdown in Jakarta.

The government views Anies and his support base of conservative Islamic organizations as a serious political threat. So, in response, pro-government “buzzers” (or social media influencers) were mobilized to spread anti-Anies material and to criticize the proposed lockdown in Jakarta as a dangerous and politically motivated policy—despite overwhelming scientific evidence that lockdowns are effective in the fight against the virus. Jokowi then used emergency powers to overrule local governments’ coronavirus interventions and prevent them from acting independently. In Jakarta, these new bureaucratic complications delayed the city’s containment strategy, rendering it less effective and endangering lives.

The government’s antidemocratic restrictions on free speech amid the crisis also threaten to aggravate polarization. The national police issued new guidelines instructing officers to bring charges against citizens who make negative comments about the president or any public official in relation to the coronavirus outbreak. Government critics have, as a result, been harassed and intimidated, and by early April seventy-six people had been arrested for spreading hate speech and misinformation about the virus. Many of those arrested are not linked directly to Islamist organizations or parties; however, prominent opposition voices have also been targeted and threatened with criminal charges. State suppression is not yet systematic or widespread, but the securitization of the crisis may sharpen partisan divides by intensifying a sense of harassment among the opposition.

At the societal level, surveys suggest a partisan tilt in how Indonesians are judging the government’s handling of the pandemic. An April poll by SMRC found that Indonesians from the more Islamic provinces that voted against Jokowi in the 2019 presidential election are more likely to feel the government’s response has been too slow. In provinces where Jokowi won decisively, such as Bali, East Java, and Central Java, most people believe that the government acted quickly against the virus.

It is too early to tell whether polarized societal perceptions will harden or fade as the virus spreads across the country. Indonesia, like so many countries, is facing an unprecedented health emergency and a devastating economic downturn simultaneously. These twin crises could affect polarization in three different ways. If Jokowi continues to work against local leaders, especially those associated with opposition parties, and if the security apparatus is perceived to be harassing the opposition, then the pandemic will deepen political polarization. But if Jokowi can change tack and present a coherent response to these crises that explicitly tries to bridge political divides, polarization may ease. Alternatively, if Jokowi’s actions fail to prevent major loss of life, economic turmoil, and unrest, he may begin to lose his own support base, and the shared tragedy of this virus may soften the animus between the president’s supporters and his enemies.

Eve Warburton received her PhD from the Department of Political and Social Change at Australian National University’s Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs and is currently a postdoctoral research fellow at the National University of Singapore’s Asia Research Institute.

In the past, Kenya’s fragmented political elite occasionally has come together during national emergencies. However, such a scenario seems unlikely now. When the coronavirus arrived in Kenya in mid-March, the ruling Jubilee Party, led by President Uhuru Kenyatta, a member of the Kikuyu ethnic group, was grappling with a new internal schism driven by Deputy President William Ruto, from the Kalenjin ethnic group. This fissure appeared to be eclipsing the dominant divide between the Kikuyu and Luo that has afflicted Kenyan politics for decades but receded in recent years, ever since Kenyatta made a fragile peace with longtime Luo opposition leader Raila Odinga. The pandemic has intensified this elite power struggle, allowing Kenyatta to marginalize Ruto within the ruling party and get closer to Odinga. At the societal level, the virus has encouraged efforts for a more coherent national response, yet it also has exposed the deep ethnic and regional inequalities that have long underpinned the country’s polarization. The dual challenges of managing elite squabbles and mitigating worsening economic and public health conditions will profoundly test Kenya’s leadership in the coming months.

Kenya’s current elite rivalries began to surface following the contentious 2017 presidential election, when Kenyatta and Odinga reached an agreement to reduce ethnic tensions. Their March 2018 rapprochement included the formation of the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI), dedicated to healing ethnic wounds and promoting reconciliation. The BBI had many skeptics because of previous failures to overcome the Kikuyu-Luo divide and because the two leaders had crafted it with little support from their constituencies. Ruto emerged as the BBI’s key opponent within the Jubilee Party, since the Kenyatta-Odinga alliance threatened to prevent him from succeeding to the presidency in the 2022 elections. Ruto has tried to rally some Kikuyu elites and undermine Kenyatta in his own backyard, but Kenyatta and Odinga have successfully touted their new alliance as the antidote to polarization.

The BBI taskforce produced a report in November 2019 that recommended a number of measures to strengthen decentralization, boost political inclusion and power sharing, and reform state institutions to enhance socioeconomic equity. None of these recommendations were bold or new, but Kenyatta and Odinga latched onto the report and began countrywide campaigns to seek broad national buy-in for it. The two pushed for a constitutional referendum as soon as June 2020 on the formation of a Kenyatta-Odinga coalition government, reminiscent of the 2008–12 Government of National Unity between then president Mwai Kibaki, another Kikuyu, and Odinga.

After the coronavirus struck Kenya, the Jubilee Party started to purge Ruto supporters from key positions in a bid to get rid of him. Fierce struggles for control of powerful party committees have fueled accusations that Kenyatta and his allies are trying to “steal the party” from Ruto. At the same time, the crisis has interrupted Kenyatta and Odinga’s campaigns for a constitutional referendum and thus postponed impending elite battles about the shape of the political alliance that will replace Jubilee. In the midst of this power-jostling, some commentators have suggested the formation of a new BBI Party, led by Kenyatta and Odinga, that would spearhead a new phase of nation-building and reconciliation.

The coronavirus pandemic has shielded Kenyan society to some extent from these new political divisions. As public attention has shifted to the economic distress occasioned by the disease, the national government has adopted measures to support vulnerable communities, mostly in urban centers where the pandemic has been widespread. The government’s broad-gauged response, including a national lockdown, has galvanized societal unity. In addition, the government-led COVID-19 Emergency Response Fund has mobilized a wide array of private and public actors and showcased a caring and responsive Kenyan state.

But this apparent unity is deceptive. The pandemic and its economic fallout have disproportionately affected disadvantaged groups within Kenyan society, heightening the class, ethnic, and regional inequalities that have driven polarization. A nationwide sense of crisis has bought the government some legitimacy as it contends with a tremendous governance challenge. But if the pandemic worsens considerably and the government is unable to manage the consequences, an implosion of state and societal institutions could precipitate deep national fragmentation.

Gilbert M. Khadiagala is the Jan Smuts Professor of International Relations and director of the African Centre for the Study of the United States at the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.

The coronavirus pandemic has rapidly intensified the severe polarization that has gripped Poland for more than a decade. A right-wing populist party, Law and Justice (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość; PiS), has controlled the presidency, parliament, and increasingly the judiciary since 2015, and its majoritarian, illiberal style of governance has exacerbated divides within the country. The pandemic has only aggravated these divisions, as the PiS government has seized the opportunity to tighten its grip on power and advance a polarizing sociocultural agenda.

The coronavirus outbreak hit Poland amid a presidential campaign (with the election scheduled for May 10), and the ruling party cynically exploited the crisis to take advantage of an uneven political playing field. The government’s ban on public events has made campaigning all but impossible for the opposition presidential candidates. Meanwhile, the incumbent President Andrzej Duda, who is running for reelection, has enjoyed relative freedom to conduct public meetings and press conferences. He has also received constant, enthusiastic coverage from PiS-controlled public television and radio stations, whereas opposition candidates have struggled to win media attention. These imbalances, coupled with a crisis-driven boost in the incumbent president’s approval ratings, make Duda the almost certain winner.

Given this lopsided presidential contest, the PiS government’s refusal to delay the election until the pandemic is over has incensed the opposition. Postponing the election would level the political playing field and might also raise uncomfortable questions for the president regarding his management of the crisis. Perhaps in light of these concerns, the government repeatedly has refused to declare a state of natural disaster or state of emergency, which automatically would delay the election. Instead, it has proposed two alternatives, both unpalatable for the opposition: using exclusively postal voting (and depriving the National Electoral Commission of its oversight powers in the process) or amending the constitution to extend the incumbent president’s term by two years. The opposition has strongly criticized the government’s insistence on holding elections during a pandemic, yet internal divisions among the various opposition presidential candidates have weakened their ability to pressure the ruling party.

Efforts to pass legislation to respond to the pandemic have also been immensely polarizing. The ruling party has not only ignored the opportunity for cooperation across party lines but also antagonized the opposition parties by completely ignoring their proposals to protect public health and the economy. The government has rushed legislation through in a ruthlessly majoritarian fashion, often in nocturnal voting sessions with no room for parliamentary or public debate. It has also included controversial last-minute amendments in the legislation, such as changes to electoral laws.

What is more, the government has inflamed polarization by raising divisive sociocultural issues and goading the opposition at a time of weakness during the pandemic. In recent weeks, the ruling party has put forward a number of “frozen” legislative initiatives, including proposals to restrict access to abortion, criminalize sex education, and liberalize hunting laws. These proposals, especially the anti-abortion law, initially had been withdrawn after massive street protests, which are now prohibited by the pandemic-related restrictions. The government has used these bills to expose divisions within the opposition and score points with its conservative base.

Though the coronavirus outbreak has thus fueled polarization within Poland, it also has shown that PiS is not invulnerable to criticism from within its own ranks. The ruling party received broad pushback, for instance, after its chairman, Jarosław Kaczyński, ordered top government officials to gather in person to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the Smolensk plane crash that killed president Lech Kaczyński and nearly a hundred other members of the Polish political elite. The event publicly flouted the legal constraints placed on all citizens during the pandemic, and 66 percent of Poles viewed Kaczyński’s actions unfavorably. Similarly, 78 percent of citizens rejected the idea of holding the presidential election amid a public health crisis, and some officials within PiS and state institutions have pushed for it to be postponed.

Finally, at the societal level, Poles have shown solidarity in various ways with the most vulnerable groups. Volunteers have helped the elderly with shopping, rallied behind local businesses, and collected donations to support the severely underfunded health system. But it is difficult to imagine that these acts of solidarity during the crisis will be able to overcome the trend toward intensifying political discord.

Joanna Fomina is assistant professor at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw.

When the Sri Lankan government implemented a lockdown in late March to contain COVID-19, its actions did not take place in a political vacuum. Rather, the government’s efforts reinforced its existing push to mobilize majoritarian social forces, consolidate power, and forestall an economic crisis.

The coronavirus pandemic hit Sri Lanka just as the country was grappling with its democratic future with a significant parliamentary election ahead. Having won a divisive presidential election in November 2019, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa dissolved parliament in early March, on the earliest date constitutionally allowed, six months before the end of the parliament’s term. While the opposition was caught infighting over its leadership and scrambled to select its candidates, the president’s party capitalized on an orderly nomination process and prepared the ground for a major victory. With confirmed cases of the coronavirus slowly increasing after March 10, the president postponed a nationwide lockdown until the day after nominations were over on March 19. However, authority over the electoral process then shifted to the Election Commission, which postponed the parliamentary elections due to public health concerns.

With elections still on the horizon now in June, the president has aggravated polarization by disregarding calls to reconvene parliament and address the crisis with the opposition’s support. Parliament remains dissolved, and the ruling party has sought to take sole credit for what Sri Lankans widely perceive as a successful response to the pandemic. Indeed, Sri Lanka has controlled the spread of the virus better than many other countries, mainly thanks to Sri Lanka’s free healthcare system and robust preventive community health infrastructure.

The government’s militarized response to the coronavirus crisis undermines democratic space and reinforces a polarized political culture. Rajapaksa was defense secretary during the final phase of Sri Lanka’s civil war (1983–2009), while his brother, the current prime minister, was president. Drawing parallels to their wartime efforts, which they billed as a “war against terrorism,” the Rajapaksa regime has given the military a dominant role in the pandemic response. Army Commander Shavendra Silva heads the National Operation Centre for Prevention of COVID-19 Outbreak, along with other military personnel holding prominent positions. Crucially, the government has also promoted a militarized mindset in dealing with the pandemic, and as during the civil war, militarization has been combined with nationalist ideology alienating minority groups.

Further complicating the political situation is an impending economic depression. With weeks under lockdown, Sri Lanka’s already fragile and indebted economy has now been pushed over the cliff into a downward spiral of falling foreign exchange earnings in key sectors, including tourism, migrant worker remittances, and garment exports. And over a month after the lockdown began, the government is attempting to resume production, particularly in the export industries, and hastily hold parliamentary elections before the economic pain fully hits. In addition, a chauvinist narrative has already emerged that scapegoats Muslims for the spread of the pandemic. This narrative conveniently disregards the government’s own lapses; while the first cases of the coronavirus were traced to European tourists, their arrivals were not blocked for weeks due to the economic costs.

Anti-Muslim violence has been on the rise in Sri Lanka over the past decade, and the pandemic has provided fresh fodder for intolerance and abuse. The government has mandated the cremation of those who have died from COVID-19 and denied Muslim families the right to bury their dead, contrary to the World Health Organization’s guidelines. Furthermore, the media has demonstrated anti-Muslim prejudices, and social media discourse has targeted Muslim communities as an “other” that will not comply with the state’s militarized dictates to address the pandemic. Through such means, the government and allied societal forces have clearly sought to mobilize Sri Lanka’s Sinhala ethnic majority in a bid to consolidate support ahead of the parliamentary elections. Throughout Sri Lanka’s history, this combination of polarizing leadership at the helm of state power and majoritarian social movements has not only led to authoritarian repression but also to prolonged instability and social crises.

Ahilan Kadirgamar is a senior lecturer in the Department of Sociology at the University of Jaffna in Sri Lanka.

The coronavirus pandemic has had a mixed impact on the decades-old divide between Thailand’s opposing political camps: a pro-establishment bloc that supports monarchical rule and an anti-establishment bloc that views the political system as incompatible with democracy. Amid the current crisis, supporters of both sides have at times shared common frustrations over the inept or delayed responses of the pro-establishment government. Nonetheless, political and societal fault lines have remained in place.

The coronavirus outbreak has changed existing dynamics of polarization by creating divisions inside the pro-establishment camp. Although Thailand was the first country after China to have confirmed cases of the coronavirus on January 13, 2020, the government’s response has been sluggish and directionless, mainly because of infighting within the ruling coalition. Leaders in the public health sector, traditionally staunch allies of the establishment, advised stricter border regulations as a preventive measure, but their recommendations fell on deaf ears. Medical professionals publicly criticized the government’s negligence, resulting in further fragmentation within elite pro-establishment circles. To deal with this internal conflict, the regime eventually let the public health sector take over the policy response to the pandemic in mid-March 2020.

Meanwhile, supporters of the monarchy expected that the palace would play a larger role in alleviating crises, per the example set by the previous king. One royalist Facebook page posted an elaborate comment outlining what the king should have done for Thais in these difficult times, but has so far failed to do. This kind of overt criticism of the palace from conservative hardliners is rare and may reflect changing dynamics within the pro-establishment bloc.

As for the wider society, the government’s poor management of public health policies and the economic repercussions of the ongoing lockdown have sparked nationwide outrage across the political spectrum. In the short run, the poor have been hit hardest by the economic slowdown. However, the urban middle class, which has been a pillar of the pro-establishment camp, also will be affected over time. What is more, numerous scandals arising from governmental corruption related to the pandemic have led to outrage and growing mistrust among the middle class. In one notable scandal, a minister’s aide was allegedly involved in stockpiling and selling millions of sanitary masks to China even after the government banned the export of such masks.

Although different groups have shared grievances over the government’s handling of the crisis, the existing ideological divide has so far hindered meaningful cross-camp cooperation at both the elite and societal levels. Pro- and anti-establishment civil society groups have launched their own charitable programs, without effective coordination. Worse still, supporters of the two camps have at times discredited their opponents’ humanitarian efforts online and offline. The pandemic has also reignited debates over clashing notions of Thai identity. Anti-establishment voices have attributed the government’s poor response to the crisis to its exclusive and conservative notion of Thai identity. These criticisms have provoked pushback from pro-establishment supporters, who argue that their conception of national identity is instrumental in forging the national unity needed to get through the health crisis.

Ideological divisions also have helped create polarized attitudes toward the lockdown and the situation of vulnerable communities. Whereas the pro-establishment camp is arguably prone to support a more authoritarian approach to the lockdown and the ongoing state of emergency, liberal groups within the anti-establishment bloc argue that the health crisis should not supersede basic rights and freedoms. Similarly, those in the anti-establishment camp mostly sympathize with the poor and sometimes become disgruntled when others do not share this sentiment. In contrast, some conservatives, who view wealth as a sign of spiritual merit, disagree with the idea of providing unconditional help to the poor and instead argue that the crisis is a test of survival.

In sum, the coronavirus pandemic has neither exacerbated nor healed Thailand’s polarization. Rather, it has highlighted how deeply rooted and immensely powerful ideological cleavages are in creating divided perceptions of the reality of the crisis.

Janjira Sombatpoonsiri is an associate fellow at the German Institute of Global and Area Studies (GIGA) and researcher at the Institute of Asian Studies at Chulalongkorn University in Thailand.

At the onset of the pandemic, Turkey enjoyed a brief period when its deeply polarized political elite—riven by a clash between President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his opponents—seemed to be uniting around the national response effort. Although Erdoğan has increasingly consolidated a form of one-man rule in recent years, he chose not to present himself as the face of the policy response. Instead, he empowered his minister of health, a doctor and technocrat who has gained considerable trust from citizens across party lines. The opposition, meanwhile, was careful not to explicitly criticize the government’s handling of the crisis. However, a bitter conflict between the government and opposition quickly terminated this initial wave of elite cooperation.

Polarization first flared over clashes between the central government and local governments controlled by the main opposition, most notably in Istanbul and Ankara. Ever since the opposition won mayoral elections in Turkey’s three largest cities in March 2019, the new mayors have been regarded as challengers to the incumbent president, and the central government has curtailed the powers and autonomy of local authorities.

During the pandemic, these tensions erupted when the mayors of Istanbul and Ankara launched donation campaigns to help struggling families in their cities. The central government suspended these fundraising initiatives, started its own national campaign, and opened criminal investigations into these local efforts. Its measures to undermine the opposition’s outreach to citizens during the pandemic have extended even to smaller cities such as Adana and Antalya, where it shut down soup kitchens and field hospitals operated by the local governments. Furthermore, when the government declared a last-minute lockdown in mid-April, it chose not to inform local officials beforehand, leaving them with no time to organize measures such as providing transportation for healthcare workers. Even though local authorities are on the front lines of fighting the pandemic, the central government has excluded them from the national response, thereby fueling polarization and hampering the delivery of much-needed local services to citizens.

Elite polarization also has deepened during the coronavirus outbreak as a result of the government’s sustained efforts to tighten its grip on the country and clamp down still further on the opposition. Erdoğan has referred to opponents in the media and politics who are critical of the government’s measures as “akin to the coronavirus,” and the state’s media watchdog has heavily fined opposition news channels for their critical pandemic-related coverage. Perhaps more concerningly, the government has prepared a draft law that gives the state extensive powers over social media platforms and companies. Although the bill has now been withdrawn from the parliament’s agenda due to emergency bills on the economy and public health, the opposition fears that it will be soon be reintroduced. The government has also passed divisive new legislation on criminal sentencing, which grants amnesty to thousands of prisoners yet entirely excludes those jailed for “political” crimes.

It is still too early to assess how these developments have impacted Turkish society at large, but the crisis and the government’s response seem to be aggravating preexisting societal divisions rather than fostering a sense of solidarity. The government’s exclusionary and unilateral response to the pandemic has fueled widespread distrust, as seen recently in the public reactions to the last-minute lockdown announcement. Many citizens did not trust the government’s claim that the lockdown would be limited to forty-eight hours, and consequently they rushed out in crowds to stock up on supplies, risking further infections. Similarly, many Turks sympathetic to the opposition do not believe the official numbers of infected individuals and deaths. The government’s divisive tactics, coupled with the lack of a free and independent media, have produced polarized views of the trustworthiness of official data. Finally, the government’s policy of implementing full lockdowns on the weekend but only partial restrictions during the week has fueled partisan debate among citizens regarding whether stricter quarantine measures are necessary.

In short, the growing polarization in Turkey during the time of the coronavirus tracks earlier patterns of political discord: it is largely elite-driven and more specifically has intensified owing to the illiberal policies and polarizing rhetoric of Erdoğan and his government. Despite initial hopes of unity, Turkey’s vicious cycle of polarized politics and democratic erosion has continued.

Senem Aydın-Düzgit is a professor of international relations at Sabancı University, Istanbul, as well as a senior scholar and research and academic affairs coordinator at Istanbul Policy Center.

The coronavirus arrived in the United States at an apex of political polarization: the final phase of the impeachment process against President Donald Trump, which capped years of growing partisan acrimony between Democratic and Republican politicians, as well as deepening divisions in the larger society. Some observers wondered if a national public health emergency might jolt the two clashing camps into setting party politics aside and tackling the challenge together—echoing perhaps the experience of World War II, which helped depolarize U.S. politics for decades afterward. Yet although Trump talked in March about assuming the mantle of a “wartime president,” his response to the coronavirus has been one more elaboration of a by now well-rehearsed strategy of governing through polarizing attacks on opponents and treating every major policy challenge almost solely in terms of how it affects his reelection chances.

Eschewing any unifying language about the suffering that COVID-19 has inflicted on hundreds of thousands of Americans, Trump has built his coronavirus narrative around his favored partisan targets. He has attacked the media, which he blames for exaggerating the crisis to harm his reelection campaign; foreigners (in particular China); scientific expertise, including that of “deep state” professionals within his own administration; and multilateral institutions, such as the World Health Organization. Still further, he has skirmished almost daily with Democratic governors, especially New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, over their requests for a more robust response from the federal government. And he has spoken out against strengthening voting-by-mail options for the November elections on the basis that doing so would hurt Republicans.

This polarizing leadership style, reinforced by conservative media outlets, has contributed to a partisan divide among Americans in their views about many elements of the crisis. Although 81 percent of Republican and Republican-leaning voters said in a Pew poll conducted in April that Trump was doing a good job in responding to the needs of medical workers and state governors, only 14 percent of Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters agreed. Similarly, 69 percent on the Republican side found Trump’s characterizations of the outbreak accurate; 77 percent of Democrats did not. The partisan fissure extends at least somewhat to responses. According to another April poll, 61 percent of Americans found the restrictions in the area where they live to be about right. Yet 48 percent of Republicans expressed concern that lockdowns might not be lifted quickly enough, whereas 81 percent of Democrats feared they would be lifted too quickly. The outbreak of anti-quarantine demonstrations in multiple states in mid-April embodied one part of this divisive picture. In his reflexively polarizing approach, Trump could not resist egging the protesters on in a series of tweets, calling for them to “liberate” their states, even though they were in fact contesting policies in line with his own official coronavirus guidelines.

Further fueling the partisan divide is the fact that the virus’s impact has differed along key demographic axes. The crisis has underlined the urban-rural divide that is so closely related to the country’s polarization, as infections hit hard initially in cities and spread only more slowly to rural areas. More Democratic-leaning demographic groups—particularly African Americans—are experiencing markedly higher rates of virus-related fatalities and job losses than white Americans.

At the same time, the pandemic has had unifying effects in some domains. The unfolding economic crisis has prompted congressional Democrats and Republicans to work together, with only moderate partisan skirmishing, to enact emergency economic legislation. Some state governors are cooperating across party lines to formulate common responses. Multiplying numbers of community-level acts of solidarity are forging some new bridges and bonds among citizens.

But overall, the coronavirus has thus far reinforced rather than lessened the core U.S. partisan divide. With the virus still spreading, the president sticking firmly to his partisan script in addressing it, and what is bound to be an extraordinarily divisive presidential election now coming into focus, this negative trajectory of partisan division and enmity appears almost certain to continue, and possibly worsen.