This book comprehensively analyzes COVID-19 and its impact as well as the response from the perspectives of humanities and social sciences. This book covers topics ranging from geopolitical relations to regional integration, public health governance and even the evolution of professional practices in the time of COVID-19. It constitutes a precious and timely interdisciplinary reference for anyone aspiring not only to grasp the origins and dynamics of the present challenge, but also to identify future opportunities for further growth and holistic progress for humanity.

“We live in paradoxical times. Traditionally, the West has led the world in theory and practice. Yet, recent developments, from COVID-19 to the storming of the US Capitol, show how lost the West has become. This loss of direction has deep roots. In their usual thoughtful and incisive fashion, Lim Mah-Hui and Michael Heng Siam-Heng, draw out the deeper origins of our current crises and show us a new way forward. A must-read for anyone who wants to understand our strange times." -- Kishore Mahbubani, founding Dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore, is the author of Has China Won? “A powerful and compelling critique of neoliberal globalization and its potentially devastating, but long underestimated, consequences for financial stability, the environment, social equity and democracy. COVID-19 has laid bare these dysfunctions and stresses. But this is not a pessimistic book. The authors argue, correctly, that we may be on the cusp of another Great Transformation. The choices we make today to make markets more resilient, improve social protection, and preserve our freedoms could lay the foundations for a sustainable globalization that works for future generations.” -- Donald Low, Professor of Practice in Public Policy and Director of the Institute for Emerging Market Studies, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology “This fascinating book highlights the interplay between financial and health crises that the COVID-19 pandemic exposed. Financialized capitalism is bad for the planet, bad for human health, and creates more unequal and insecure societies. The authors make a strong and convincing case for re-embedding markets into society and finance into the real economy.” --Jayati Ghosh, Professor of Economics, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, USA “Lim and Heng’s ambitious volume argues that 2020 was the year of the global ‘perfect storm’ of multiple crises, with the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbating financial, economic, socio-political and environmental breakdowns. They extend Karl Polanyi’s original insights to appeal for a sustainable global New Deal. While the reader may not agree with all their theses, the scope of their coverage and ambition will set the stage for debates over the annus horribilis.” -- Jomo K.S., Founder-chair, IDEAS www.network.ideas; former United Nations Assistant Secretary General "This book provides plenty of food for thought for many pondering if the COVID-19 crisis could lead to a major transformation of the global economic system shaped by unfettered market forces and policies of governments in their service."-- Yilmaz Akyuz, former Director, UNCTAD, Geneva

Global value chains (GVCs) have driven dramatic expansions in trade, productivity, and economic growth in developing countries. This book examines the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on GVCs and explores whether they can continue to be a driver of trade and development. The report reviews previous crises and what these tell us about the resilience of GVC firms to shocks. It examines the observed impact of COVID-19 on trade during the sharp global recession of 2020. It summarizes discussions with GVC firms on the impacts of, and their responses to, the COVID shock. GVCs showed surprising resilience, but the rapid recovery raised new issues with supply chains. The book then explores simulations from a global economic model of the potential longer-term impacts of COVID-19 on developing countries and other key factors shaping the global economy, including the evolving role of China, increasing trade restrictions and policy responses to global warming. The analysis shows that while there are risks associated with GVCs, especially those concentrated around key nodes and where opportunities to find alternative suppliers or buyers are limited, there are mechanisms by which GVCs maintain trade relationships during a crisis, paving the way for a strong trade-led recovery. Measures are identified that can enhance the resilience of GVCs in low-income countries. This report finds that policies that maintain and enhance trade can contribute toward crisis management and recovery. Attempts to reshore production would make all countries worse off, including those that implement them, and could drive 52 million people, mainly in Africa, into extreme poverty. Measures to meet climate change commitments will have more profound impacts, leading to a shift away from carbon-intensive GVCs, while new opportunities for trade will arise in GVCs that are less carbon intensive.

Renowned political scientist Ian Bremmer draws lessons from global challenges of the past 100 years—including the pandemic—to show how we can respond to three great crises unfolding over the next decade. In this revelatory, unnerving, and ultimately hopeful book, Bremmer details how domestic and international conflicts leave us unprepared for a trio of looming crises—global health emergencies, transformative climate change, and the AI revolution. Today, Americans cannot reach consensus on any significant political issue, and US and Chinese leaders behave as if they’re locked in a new Cold War. We are squandering opportunities to meet the challenges that will soon confront us all. In coming years, humanity will face viruses deadlier and more infectious than Covid. Intensifying climate change will put tens of millions of refugees in flight and require us to reimagine how we live our daily lives. Most dangerous of all, new technologies will reshape the geopolitical order, disrupting our livelihoods and destabilizing our societies faster than we can grasp and address their implications. The good news? Some farsighted political leaders, business decision-makers, and individual citizens are already collaborating to tackle all these crises. The question that should keep us awake is whether they will work well and quickly enough to limit the fallout—and, most importantly, whether we can use these crises to innovate our way toward a better world. Drawing on strategies both time-honored and cutting-edge, from the Marshall Plan to the Green New Deal, The Power of Crisis provides a roadmap for surviving—even thriving in—the 21st century. Bremmer shows governments, corporations, and every concerned citizen how we can use these coming crises to create the worldwide prosperity and opportunity that 20th-century globalism promised but failed to deliver.

COVID-19 is the most significant global crisis of any of our lifetimes. The numbers have been stupefying, whether of infection and mortality, the scale of public health measures, or the economic consequences of shutdown. Coronavirus Politics identifies key threads in the global comparative discussion that continue to shed light on COVID-19 and shape debates about what it means for scholarship in health and comparative politics. Editors Scott L. Greer, Elizabeth J. King, Elize Massard da Fonseca, and André Peralta-Santos bring together over 30 authors versed in politics and the health issues in order to understand the health policy decisions, the public health interventions, the social policy decisions, their interactions, and the reasons. The book’s coverage is global, with a wide range of key and exemplary countries, and contains a mixture of comparative, thematic, and templated country studies. All go beyond reporting and monitoring to develop explanations that draw on the authors' expertise while engaging in structured conversations across the book.

"The Fight for Climate after COVID-19 draws on the troubled and uneven COVID-19 experience to illustrate the critical need to ramp up resilience rapidly and effectively on a global scale. After years of working alongside public health and resilience experts crafting policy to build both pandemic and climate change preparedness, Alice C. Hill exposes parallels between the underutilized measures that governments should have taken to contain the spread of COVID-19 -- such as early action, cross-border planning, and bolstering emergency preparation -- and the steps leaders can take now to mitigate the impacts of climate change. Through practical analyses of current policy and thoughtful guidance for successful climate adaptation, The Fight for Climate after COVID-19 reveals that, just as our society has transformed itself to meet the challenge of coronavirus, so too will we need to adapt our thinking and our policies to combat the ever-increasing threat of climate change." --

Public health was the immediate concern when the Covid-19 pandemic struck in Asia, then in Europe and other parts of the world. The response of our education systems is no less vital. Higher education has played a major role in responding to the pandemic and it must help shape a better, more equitable and just post-Covid-19 world. This book explores the various responses of higher education to the pandemic across Europe and North America, with contributions also from Africa, Asia and South America. The contributors write from the perspective of higher education leaders with institutional responsibility, as well as from that of public authorities or specialists in specific aspects of higher education policy and practice. Some contributions analyze how specific higher education institutions reacted, while others reflect on the impact of Covid-19 on key issues such as internationalization, finance, academic freedom and institutional autonomy, inclusion and equality and public responsibility.The book describes the various ways in which higher education is facing the Covid-19pandemic. It is designed to help universities, specifically their staff and students as well as their partners, contribute to a more sustainable and democratic future.

This book comprehensively analyzes COVID-19 and its impact as well as the response from the perspectives of humanities and social sciences. This book covers topics ranging from geopolitical relations to regional integration, public health governance and even the evolution of professional practices in the time of COVID-19. It constitutes a precious and timely interdisciplinary reference for anyone aspiring not only to grasp the origins and dynamics of the present challenge, but also to identify future opportunities for further growth and holistic progress for humanity.

EPUB and EPDF available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. The COVID-19 pandemic has deeply shaken societies and lives around the world. This powerful book reveals how the pandemic has intensified socio-economic problems and inequalities across the world whilst offering visions for a better future informed by social movements and public sociology. Bringing together experts from 27 countries, the authors explore the global echoes of the pandemic and the different responses adopted by governments, policy makers and activists. The new expressions of social action, and forms of solidarity and protest, are discussed in detail, from the Black Lives Matter protests to the French Strike Movement and the Lebanese Uprising. This is a unique global analysis on the current crisis and the contemporary world and its outcomes.

Governments, businesses, and individuals around the world are thinking about what happens after the COVID-19 pandemic. Can we hope to not only ward off another COVID-like disaster but also eliminate all respiratory diseases, including the flu? Bill Gates, one of our greatest and most effective thinkers and activists, believes the answer is yes. The author of the #1 New York Times best seller How to Avoid a Climate Disaster lays out clearly and convincingly what the world should have learned from COVID-19 and what all of us can do to ward off another catastrophe like it. Relying on the shared knowledge of the world’s foremost experts and on his own experience of combating fatal diseases through the Gates Foundation, Gates first helps us understand the science of infectious diseases. Then he shows us how the nations of the world, working in conjunction with one another and with the private sector, how we can prevent a new pandemic from killing millions of people and devastating the global economy. Here is a clarion call—strong, comprehensive, and of the gravest importance.