Description

Summary:  In early 2020, two days before Wuhan went into coronavirus lockdown on January 23, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) launched Think Global Health, a major initiative that covers topics such as environment, poverty, trade, migration, urbanization, gender and governance, and their impact on global health.
As Covid-19 spread, it became increasingly clear that the world also needs to pay attention to the profound ways in which the pandemic is reshaping democracy and governance globally. Last September, we made a $100,000 urgent needs grant to CFR for the first year of a two-year project that takes a comparative look at five large democracies (Brazil, India, Indonesia, the Philippines and the U.S.), and examines the broad ways in which Covid-19 may be reshaping politics and societies, and exacerbating challenges to democracy and social trust. 
Through a series of roundtables, workshops, events with educators and students, briefings for a broad range of policymakers and opinion leaders, and an extensive amount of written work, the project has helped focus the attention of civil society and policymakers in multiple countries. It highlighted the ways in which COVID-19-related policies are particularly impacting the most marginalized citizens, and their lasting long-term outcomes demand greater scrutiny. Importantly, the project has begun to build and amplify the voice of a community with many new perspectives, from the five focus countries and other states as well, that focuses on the policy impacts of the pandemic and on how COVID-19 is exposing major flaws in longstanding political and social structures.
CFR requests our support for the second year of the project that will continue to examine the vast impacts of COVID-19 and highlight the ways in which the emergency could provide for new, bold policy thinking. The PI, CFR Senior Fellow Joshua Kurlantzick, a prolific author and a 1998-1999 Luce Scholar, said, “The Luce grant has played a major role in helping Think Global Health focus on governance and inequality and democracy, in addition to public health issues. The recommendations generated by this project will help inform the work of civil society organizations, state and community groups, and other actors focused on forging political and social solutions to bring countries back from democratic deterioration, including the new Biden administration and the new U.S. Congress.”
Recommendation:  That the Directors of the Henry Luce Foundation approve a one-year grant of $125,000 to the Council on Foreign Relations for a project on COVID-19 and its effects on democracy and societies.
www.cfr.org www.thinkglobalhealth.org/series/democracy-and-coronavirus