DE LA GESTIÓN DE CRISIS A LA CRISIS DE GESTIÓN: RESPONSABILIDAD Y DEMOCRACIAS LIBERALES EN EL ESTALLIDO DE LA PANDEMIA DE LA COVID-19

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic shocked societies around the world. In their efforts to tailor their responses to the crisis to their own conditions for survival, from the outset governments tended to resort to arguments that limited accountability before their populations. Liberal democracies were no exception to this approach. In this context, their leaders used the metaphor of war to describe their position as guarantors of the population’s survival in the face of the new threat. Caught between uncertainty and the need to predict the nature and evolution of the invisible enemy, their responses called into question the political, professional and personal responsibility of leaders. This article offers a reflection on the level of responsibility of governments in liberal democracies in managing the pandemic. During the crisis, decision-makers tended to be driven by the narratives that were most beneficial to them in order to escape their responsibilities, thereby underpinning their short-term political needs through the use of bellicose metaphors, the blame game, competition with other countries, and the dispersion of sources in the decision-making process. This reality now calls for reflection by social actors, including experts, intellectuals and the media, to transcend the prevailing rhetoric in management of the pandemic and the “new normal” that followed, so that the dynamics of constant alterations in the rules of the game and responsibilities can give way, in the future, to a scenario with less arbitrariness and more accountability.