Turkish research centre publishes a theoretical guide to post-COVID-19 global politics
—a Thoughtfox press release—
(November 9, 2020)
Close on the heels of the Republican incumbent Donald Trump’s defeat in the US presidential elections at the hands of his Democratic rival, Joe Biden, the Konya-based Turkish Center for Global and Area Studies has released a 40+ page interpretative guide of sorts to post-COVID-19 global politics. Authored by Piyush Mathur, the founding editor of Thoughtfox, this theoretical document had been awaiting publication in its revised form since early October—and had been originally submitted to the centre on August 30.
The US presidential election took place on November 3; however, Mathur’s report—titled ‘Understanding post-Covid-19 global politics: A tentative theoretical framework’—retains several observations pertaining to global politics that might unfold in the wake of a Biden presidency. With Biden’s having won the election, this component of the report might be of special interest to international political observers.
Declaring that ‘[p]ost-COVID-19 global politics would be global politics writ extra-large’, the report theorizes the following five factors as the ‘key shapers of the post-COVID-19 global politics’: flows of information; flows of populations; the ‘hidden significance of history’; the world’s democracies’ ‘domestic political choices’; and the world’s extent and character of access to COVID-19 vaccination (as well as its possible impact on ‘global medical care’ itself). Among the above five factors, Mathur has deemed the world’s democracies’ domestic political choices to be the most decisive to what sort of global politics has unfolded since the pandemic’s inception and would continue to unfold hereafter.
The report would be of interest predominantly to political scientists and philosophers, policy wonks, pedagogues, and transdisciplinary academicians. The report can be downloaded here or here.