The democratic performance of the Covid-19 crisis governance across Europe: A comparative analysis of democratic participation and the rule of law

On the one hand, the recent literature addressing the democratic performance of Covid-19 crisis governance has focused on its horizontal dimension and investigated the emergency powers of governments and their impact on legislatures and courts. On the other hand, when exploring the vertical dimension of the democratic performance of Covid-19 crisis governance, it has investigated the impact of governments’ crisis measures on citizens’ rights and freedoms. It has so far neglected the impact of the multilevel structure of political systems in Europe on the democratic quality of Covid-19 crisis governance. This paper aims to fill this gap in literature by focusing on the principles of democratic participation and the rule of law of a politically legitimate crisis governance in multi-level systems. It identifies the standards and empirical indicators of democratic participation and the rule of law in crisis governance in multi-level systems and provides a first assessment of them during the Covid-19 crisis governance. The paper will therefore lay the foundation of future empirical work to assess if and how multilevel systems affect democratic participation and the rule of law during crisis governance.