Alan Cafruny, the Henry Platt Bristol Chair of International Affairs and Professor of Government, recently chaired a panel on “The Political Economy of the Pandemic” at the British International Studies Association (BISA) annual convention at Newcastle University.
He presented a paper, “The Covid Crisis in the USA: Neoliberal Underpinnings of ‘American Exceptionalism,’” in which he examined why the U.S. management of the pandemic was substantially worse than that of other wealthy industrialized countries.
“The U.S. experience accords with an extensive comparative literature showing that right-wing populist regimes developed distinctive, counterproductive responses to the pandemic,” he said. “At the same time, containment of the virus was constrained by the impact of decades of neoliberalism on the U.S. economy and public health care system.”
