Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence HKBU

The onset of 2020 found Covid-19 spreading throughout the world. Policymakers employed diverse methods to minimize the outbreak’s impact. Political trust appeared to be a crucial determinant of virus control. Where political trust was high, the citizens tended to abide by the governmental guidelines. Recognizing the importance of political trust in the process of dealing with health emergencies, this project aims at designing methods for restoring political trust. To do so, it examines the role of political trust in the inoculation of Covid-19 vaccines rates in 3 European and 3 Asian administrations. The Centre highlights the intra-systemic elements of political trust in EU and Asian countries that managed to vaccinate high, medium, and low proportions of their populations. Having detected how political trust rendered the inoculation rates more successful in some administrations than others, this project proceeds with conducting an inter-systemic comparison between the case studies in Europe and Asia. The role of the EU Institutions and the endeavor of the EU to achieve high vaccination rates across the EU are emphasized. Based on the intra-systemic and inter-systemic analysis, the project proposes methods for rebuilding political trust and increasing public compliance with governmental guidelines during health crises. This project is foremost expected to be useful for policymakers who deal with the containment of pandemics. Academics, early-career scholars, students, and the general public also benefit from the project. To enhance the outreach and maximize the project's impact, the lessons drawn from its findings form the basis for the construction of two freely accessible MOOCs. One of these courses instructs policymakers on how to restore trust during pandemics. The target audience of the second course is the general public which is instructed on how to best respond to future pandemics.