Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.5673/sip.59.3.3
Democracy in an Age of Pandemic: Civil and Human Rights and the Choice between Freedom and Safety
Pero Maldini
orcid.org/0000-0001-8036-619X
; University of Dubrovnik, Department of Mass Communication, Croatia
Abstract
The health and economic crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has grown into
a political crisis. It manifests itself primarily in challenges to the institutions of liberal democracy,
particularly in ensuring a legitimate legal and political framework for action and crisis
management in an emergency situation. This paper examines the implementation of public
health measures to protect life and health (epidemiological measures, vaccinations), which
by their very nature involve restrictions on civil liberties, and analyzes their legitimacy and
appropriateness against the standards of liberal democracy. The theoretical and legal-political
framework of the analysis is the relationship between freedom and safety, i.e. between the civil
rights and liberties guaranteed in liberal democracy and the right to life and health as a fundamental
human right. Based on the distinction between these two concepts and the analysis
of the scope and manner of the implementation of public health measures – especially in the
current context of the crisis of liberal democracy and the populist instrumentalization of civil
rights for certain political goals and the state of infodemics – the specifics of this relationship
are determined. Following the findings of this analysis, it is concluded that civil rights and
human rights are not mutually exclusive, despite the competitive relationship and tension between
individual liberty and public security – which is particularly emphasized in a pandemic
situation. On the contrary, they complement each other and are prerequisites for each other.
This path points to the possibilities of achieving a balance between them, and thus to the possibilities
of overcoming the crisis caused by the pandemic.
Keywords
civil rights; human rights; epidemiological measures; vaccination; COVID-19 pandemic
Hrčak ID:
271636
URI
Publication date:
31.1.2022.
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