Upcoming Events

Workshop May 2023

Trust- Transparency and the Transnational management of Covid-19

A workshop as part of the Jean Monnet Centre Improving Institutional Trust during Pandemics (ITTPP)

When: 19 May 2023

Mode: Hybrid (in person and on Zoom)

Where: Meeting Room, GIS (with Zoom) or an external venue

Abstract and call for papers

The workshop will launch the European Union-funded Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence: Improving Institutional Trust in Times of Pandemics, a project initially inspired by the development of the Covid-19 pandemic and its diversified impact in different parts of Europe and Asia.

The specific angle taken is that of trust and transparency. The Covid-19 pandemic demonstrated that trust in political institutions and actors and the medical professions is a key determinant of the extent to which a general public complies with governmental guidelines (facemasks, vaccination, social distancing) and measures during health crises. Common understandings of trust can be mapped out across disciplinary boundaries and discussed in the cognate fields in the medical and social sciences. While contexts matter in terms of the understandings and uses made of concepts such as trust and transparency, comparison across academic disciplines and experiences drawn from country experiences allows general propositions to be formulated for further exploration. Building on the diagnosis of a crisis of trust (in the field of health security and across multiple layers of governance), the workshop renews with calls to restore trust by enhancing transparency.

The workshop explores the transnational dimensions of the role of trust and transparency in the context of health crises. Three states/territories from Europe and three from Asia will be initially examined and form the object of presentations during this workshop. In Europe, Portugal, Greece, and Bulgaria are assessed as the countries that enjoyed high, medium, and low levels of political trust respectively during the pandemic. From Asia, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Indonesia are examined as the administrations that managed to vaccinate high, medium, and low levels of their populations. Papers discussing the role of trust and transparency in countering the pandemic in other jurisdictions are also welcome.