Sri Lanka: Pandemic-Catalyzed Democratic Backsliding (original) (raw)

Covid-19 in Asia

Abstract

This chapter investigates Sri Lanka’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Covid-19 has posed for Sri Lanka not only a public health challenge and an economic challenge but also, perhaps most seriously, a crisis of constitutional democracy. Although questions have been raised about the accuracy of government statistics, the scale of testing and contact tracing, and failures in providing protective equipment to front-line workers including military personnel, there is broad public approval of the government’s crisis response. However, much more alarming are the clear signs in the government’s response that the public health emergency has provided the impetus for an aggressive executive takeover of the state, steepening the curve of de-democratization. The chapter then describes the aspects of the governmental crisis response that are the cause of worry, and offers an analysis based on a framework drawn from comparative politics and comparative constitutional law as to the agentic, inst...

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