The Covid-19 pandemic and its impact on global political economy

Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic is likely to have a significant impact on the global political economy through acceleration of incipient trends. In this chapter, we focus on three such economic trends—the changes in the labour market brought about by technological changes, the re-organisation of global value chains and changes in social welfare regimes. These economic trends are also likely to rhyme well with a fourth political trend—the rise of populism across the world. Together, these trends can pose significant disruption to the model of globalisation that had consolidated in the last four decades. Going beyond its immediate impact on health, output and employment, the Covid-19 pandemic may well turn out to be the point of inflection in global political economy.