The special issue on social policy responses to Covid-19 in the Caucasus region consists of an introduction by Tim Dorlach and Heiko Pleines, the three aforementioned essays, as well as an essay on online education in Azerbaijan.

"Many governments have substantially increased state spending on social policy", Dorlach and Pleines write in their introduction, referring to the world as a whole, not the Caucasus region in particular. "[A] comparative analysis of states' social policy responses to the pandemic promises to hold important lessons about the kinds of social policies that can be most effective or politically most feasible during these pandemic times."

On the other hand, "other governments have been surprisingly passive and shied away from expanding social policy." Due to rising fiscal deficits and economic growth dwindling, austerity may very soon become more widespread in many countries. "[…] post-pandemic social policy might differ not just from social policy during the pandemic, but also from the pre-pandemic situation. In this sense we have to analyse whether we have reached a critical juncture, and whether the pandemic will prove to be a transformative event which sets hitherto path-dependent social policies on a new trajectory."

Read the full special issue: Caucasus Analytical Digest No. 119

The Caucasus Analytical Digest (CAD) is a bimonthly internet publication jointly produced by the CRRC-Georgia, the Research Centre for East European Studies at the University of Bremen, the Center for Security Studies (CSS) at ETH Zurich, the Center for Eastern European Studies (CEES) at the University of Zurich, and the German Association for East European Studies (DGO).