How do different regime types execute a security response during a pandemic? We interrogate the politics of monopolistic securitization which we argue to have significantly directed and influenced the COVID-19 policy strategies adopted in the ‘democratic’ United Kingdom (UK) and ‘authoritarian’ Thailand. Despite their stark political differences, we contend that the British and Thai states’ parallel resort to monopolistic securitization as an overarching pandemic approach effectively made them ‘functionally similar’ by producing security responses that differed only in magnitude and scale but not in kind. Integrating securitization and democratic standards violations frameworks, we find out that the British and Thai authorities’ monopolistic securitization of COVID-19 initially constrained the intersubjective process required to socially construct the pandemic as a primary existential threat endangering both countries. This significantly diminished their public audiences’ individual/agential and collective/institutional capacity to deliberate the immediate emergency measures they unilaterally deployed, particularly during the pandemic’s early stages. Consequently, whether it was in the UK with a supposedly robust democracy or in Thailand with at best a hybrid regime if not outright authoritarian, the security responses that emerged constituted varying types and degrees of violations within the illiberal-authoritarian spectrum. Nevertheless, as the pandemic progressed, the fundamental deliberative-iterative mechanism underpinning securitization enabled the British and Thai public audiences to gradually reclaim their role and space, allowing them to challenge the appropriateness and legitimacy of the existing emergency measures, thereby weakening the states’ monopolistic control over the process.

Young people with childhood adversity (CA) were at increased risk to experience mental health problems during the COVID-19 pandemic. Pre-pandemic research identified high-quality friendship support as a protective factor that can buffer against the emergence of mental health problems in young people with CA. This longitudinal study investigated friendship buffering effects on mental health symptoms before and at three timepoints during the pandemic in 102 young people (aged 16–26) with low to moderate CA. Multilevel analyses revealed a continuous increase in depression symptoms following the outbreak. Friendship quality was perceived as elevated during lockdowns and returned to pre-pandemic baseline levels during reopening. A stress-sensitizing effect of CA on social functioning was evident, as social thinning occurred following the outbreak. Bivariate latent change score modeling revealed that before and during the pandemic, young people with greater friendship quality self-reported lower depression symptoms and vice versa. Furthermore, sequential mediation analysis showed that high-quality friendships before the pandemic buffered depression symptoms during the pandemic through reducing perceived stress. These findings highlight the importance of fostering stable and supportive friendships in young people with CA and suggest that through reducing stress perceptions high-quality friendships can mitigate mental health problems during times of multidimensional stress.

This article analyses the constitutional framework regulating states of emergency in Poland and addresses key issues related to their interpretation and implementation. The first part discusses the conditions for declaring martial law, a state of an extraordinary situation, and a state of natural disaster, as well as the specific rules for the operation of public authorities in such emergencies. The next part analyses the practice, revealing the consistent reluctance of Polish authorities to invoke states of emergency, even in circumstances that seem to justify such measures. Consequently, a state of emergency under the 1997 Constitution was declared in Poland only once – in 2021, in response to a migration crisis on the border with Belarus. No constitutional emergency was declared during the COVID-19 pandemic, despite the introduction of far-reaching restrictions on individual rights and freedoms. The article argues that state authorities can abuse emergency regulations, either through their unjustified application or by deliberately circumventing them.

The COVID-19 pandemic has presented multifaceted challenges globally, impacting adolescent health. Among these, food security and nutrition are intertwined closely with mental health outcomes. In Indonesia, with its diverse socio-economic landscape, these interconnections may have been exacerbated by the pandemic. This study investigated the relationship between food security, nutrition and adolescent mental health in Indonesia during COVID-19. Longitudinal data were collected from 511 adolescent boys and girls in 2021–2022 in Gunungkidul district, Yogyakarta. Food security was measured using the Household Food Insecurity Access Scale (HFIAS), and the validated Kessler-10 Psychological Distress Scale (K10) was used to measure adolescent depression. Multivariate linear regression and linear mixed-effects regression were employed to explore associations between these variables, while adjusting for sex, age, pubertal status and household income. Overall, food insecurity score was positively associated with depressive symptoms (β: 0·72, 95 % CI 0·52, 0·92), while BMI z-score was inversely associated (β: −0·31, 95 % CI 0·68, −0·03). We found an increase in strength of association between food insecurity and depressive symptoms over time (moderately food-insecure: β: 1·36 (95 % CI −0·10, 2·83) to 4·63 (95 % CI 2·17, 7·09); severely food-insecure: β: 1·89 (95 % CI 0·36, 3·41) to 3·30 (95 % CI 1·50, 5·10). Enhancing food access, improving nutritional status and providing mental health support are crucial components of adolescent health.

During the global COVID-19 pandemic, many countries have expanded the level and coverage of current social insurance and social assistance programs as well as implemented new programs. Based on three separate datasets, V-Dem V-Party dataset; fourteen structured expert interviews; and a dataset of 114 social security measures, we study the link between the welfare regime, pandemic-related social policy measures, and incumbents’ ideological stand. Does the pandemic-related social policy measures mirror the political attitudes of the incumbents? What role did the welfare regime play? We scrutinise eight OECD countries (Denmark, Finland, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, UK, and the US) representing three different welfare regimes: corporatist-conservative countries, liberal countries, and socio-democratic countries. The key findings of this article show that the pandemic-related social policy measures did not mirror the political attitudes of the incumbents.

The concurrent challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic and a significant earthquake in Izmir on October 30, 2020, presented a unique scenario for disaster management and response. This study focuses on the impact of the earthquake, which resulted in 117 fatalities, including 1 due to drowning, and injured 1034 individuals, alongside widespread structural damage including to the Izmir Democracy University Buca Seyfi Demirsoy Training and Research Hospital. The objective is to assess the activation and implementation of the hospital disaster plan amidst the ongoing pandemic. Through a retrospective evaluation of all actions undertaken as per the Hospital Disaster Emergency Plan within the Disaster Management cycle, this study examines the decision-making process for the hospital evacuation on October 30, 2020, the evacuation of COVID-19 patients, and the strategies employed to increase hospital capacity. Of 216 patients hospitalized at the time of the earthquake, 65 were transferred to other facilities under COVID-19 protocols. The prolonged nature of pandemics and the likelihood of secondary disasters underscore the importance of comprehensive risk assessments and dynamic disaster planning, considering simultaneous multiple hazards. This study suggests the inclusion of multi hazard scenarios and diverse evacuation methods by using types of ambulances, such as ground, helicopter, and boat.

This retrospective study provides insights on linguistic development in exceptional circumstances assessing 378 children (between 2;6 and 3;6) who lived their first years during the COVID-19 pandemic and comparing it with normative data collected before this period (CDI-III-PT; Cadime et al., 2021). It investigates the extent to which linguistic development was modulated by a complex set of factors, including sex, maternal education, book reading, language-promoting practices, COVID-19 infection, parental stress and sleeping problems, considering three periods (during lockdowns, out of lockdowns and at present). The results show a substantial negative effect of the pandemic on both lexical and syntactic development. Considering individual variation, structural equation modelling unveiled a complex scenario in which age, sex, book reading, language-promoting practices, sleeping problems and COVID-19 infection showed a direct effect on linguistic development. Maternal education and parental stress had an indirect effect on children’s language, mediated by book reading and sleeping problems, respectively.

I investigate why some countries were more successful in containing the death toll than others during the COVID-19 pandemic. I focus on the role of socialism and on the existence of long-term regime-driven legacies that may have had an impact on the containment of COVID-related deaths. I claim that countries that went through successful socialist revolutions have specific features that equip them with better resources to cope with public challenges such as pandemics. Furthermore, these features remain even after the demise of the socialist regime. I find a positive effect of socialist revolutions over COVID-19 containment at the country level. I investigate three possible causal mechanisms for this relationship: authoritarianism, state capacity, and mass mobilization. Through mediation analysis, I find the socialist legacy seems to be channeled through higher levels of mobilization and also more authoritarian institutions.

Social policies convey normative assumptions about how households should make ends meet and organise care, but how do these ideals withstand crises such as the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic? Previous research shows continuity of welfare state models in the crisis, but mostly looked at single policy fields and produced mixed findings regarding the role of pre-crisis reform trajectories. This paper contributes a detailed analysis of assumptions about the ‘standard productive household’ in terms of three dimensions: labour market participation, coverage of economic needs and coverage of care needs. Drawing on original policy documents enacted in 2020 in Germany – which had dismantled many of its institutional strongholds for the male-breadwinner model before the crisis – we provide two novel insights. First, social policy responses to the pandemic were relatively coherent regarding assumptions about labour market participation, but expectations towards households’ abilities to make ends meet and parents’ care involvement were less coherent. In addition to relaxing conditions on stable employment and income, policy responses normalised patchwork incomes and relied on parents to compress paid and unpaid work. Second, we propose that crises may slow down reform processes that are already underway by reverting to ideas that were dominant in the past.