Pandemicracy and Organizing in Unsettling Times

In recent years, the public sectors in many countries have been reformed many times, due to cycles of centralization and decentralization and many other restructurings. Several studies have shown an overall trend of increased managerialization of public administration, which has subjected public employees to complicated systems of measurements and reporting (Power, The audit society: Rituals of verification. Oxford University Press, 1999). Even when such changes were justified by the disruptiveness of external transformations like digitization, they have by no means been comparable in timing and scope to those caused by the recent COVID-19 pandemic. Over the past 70 years, no events have so broadly challenged—and in many respects reformed—the functionality and sustainability of the organization of professional work at the core of our welfare infrastructures. The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic are visible far beyond the public health sector. Employees within social services, family counseling, therapy, culture, education, migration, business support, research, and many other public services are experiencing dramatic, previously almost unthinkable challenges (Mazzucato & Kattel, COVID-19 and public-sector capacity. Oxford Review of Economic Policy, 36(1), 256–269, 2020). Media reporting and the first research reports (Banks et al., Practising ethically during COVID-19: Social work challenges and responses. International Social Work, 63(5), 569–583, 2020; Lemieux et al., Initial impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Canadian labour market. Canadian Public Policy, 46(S1), 55–65, 2020; López-Cabarcos et al., New ways of working and public healthcare professionals’ well-being: The response to face the COVID-19 pandemic. Sustainability, 12(19), 80–87, 2020) describe major adjustments and challenges that governments, public sector organizations, and welfare occupations and professions have undergone to deal with the effects and consequences of the pandemic.