In an international comparison, Germany scores well in corona crisis management. That was the result of a study by the Bertelsmann Foundation that was presented on Friday.
For the study “Sustainable Governance Indicators 2021”, 29 OECD and EU countries were evaluated and compared using 94 indicators. However, the results relate to the period from February 2019 to January 2021 – the first year of the pandemic.
In terms of political crisis management, Germany ranks fifth in the study, behind New Zealand, South Korea, Sweden and Denmark. Ireland, Canada, Switzerland, Greece and Finland follow in sixth to tenth place.
In the case of crisis management in the Federal Republic of Germany, in the first year of the pandemic, due to a lack of competence, according to the results of the investigation. Example: weaknesses in contact tracking and data management.
There is a need for more transparency and a quick and clear transfer of data to citizens, said study author Christof Schiller. “So that they are well informed and the acceptance of the many restrictive measures is increased.” More experts from civil society would have to be involved in political decisions – trade unions, employers, environmental or social associations.
The Federal Republic also ranks fifth for the resilience of the welfare state, sixth for the resilience of democracy and first place for the resilience of its economic policy.
Thanks to the recently very positive employment balance, well-developed short-time working regulations, solid state finances and its strong health system, Germany started the pandemic under significantly more favorable conditions than many other countries, it said.
But: there are deficits in the areas of digitization and crisis prevention. When it comes to the susceptibility of the school system to crises, Germany only ranks 15th!
“Politicians must quickly set the course for improved crisis prevention and digital awakening in the state and administration in order to emerge stronger from this crisis,” said study author Christof Schiller.
The study also found that stable democracies performed better in the Corona crisis than states with democracy deficits.
▶ ︎ New Zealand, Sweden, Switzerland and Germany are at the top of the ranking of resilient democracies.
▶ ︎ Poland, Hungary and Turkey bring up the rear. “There, governments are using the pandemic to permanently restrict civil rights,” the study said.
Stable democracies benefit from forward-looking and participation-oriented political control, explained the Bertelsmann Foundation. In states in which democratic values such as freedom of the media, civil rights and the independence of the judiciary were at risk even before the crisis, there are further “worrying setbacks”.
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