COVID-19 is probably the most significant global crisis of any of our lifetimes. The numbers involved have been stupefying, whether they speak of infection and mortality, the scale of public health measures such as mobility restrictions, or the economic consequences for unemployment and public sector spending. A significant amount of research has already been published on COVID-19, with a focus on its medical and epidemiological dimensions but also social science country reports and monitoring projects that are essentially descriptive.

The objective of this book is to identify key threads in the global comparative discussion that continue to shed light on COVID-19 and shape debates about what it means for scholarship in health and comparative politics. The editors bring together over 30 authors versed in politics and the health issues in order to understand the health policy decisions, the public health interventions, the social policy decisions, their interactions, and the reasons. The book's coverage is global, with a wide range of key and exemplary countries, and contains a mixture of comparative, thematic, and templated country studies. All go beyond reporting and monitoring to develop explanations that draw on the authors' expertise while engaging in structured conversations across the book.