Book Launched: Governance, democracy and ethics in crisis-decision-making: The pandemic and beyond

Published by Manchester University Press and including chapters from fellow STS Senior Research Fellow Dr Cian O’Donovan, as well as colleagues from UCL’s Philosophy Department Prof James Wilson and Jack Hume, the book considers what it means to be in a decision-making situation where rational or knowledge-based framings of the COVID-19 pandemic, with a focus on data and scientific ways of knowing the world, rub up against more entangled human experiences and existences. How can (or should) we re-focus our perspectives and our systems as a result? 

Looking at matters ranging from the authority of the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the power of data during an emergency, to the role of public engagement as a source of policy evidence, the book reflects on what it means to govern ethically in a pandemic, and whether (and how) the expected standards and norms of public life, evidence and decision-making apply in such circumstances. The book also considers how power, authority, trust and the sense of the pandemic coming to an end are inextricably linked, creating a need for ethics to move beyond normative assertions of the law and regulations, whether in hospitals or in the halls of parliamentary power.

The book is available as an open access digital download from the Manchester University Press website: https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526180049/governance-democracy-and-ethics-in-crisis-decision-making/