Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic entails a medium- and long-run risk of heightened political conflict. In this short essay we distinguish four major consequences of COVID-19 that may fuel social tensions and political violence, namely i) spiking poverty, ii) education under stress, iii) potential for repression, and iv) reduced inter-dependence. After discussing them in turn, we will formulate policy recommendations on how to attenuate these risks.
Funding source: H2020 European Research Council
Award Identifier / Grant number: 677595
Acknowledgements
The author gratefully acknowledges financial support from the ERC Starting Grant POLICIES FOR PEACE-677595.
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Supplementary Material
The online version of this article offers supplementary material (https://doi.org/10.1515/peps-2020-0043).
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