ABSTRACT
This chapter requires a methodological prelude. During COVID-19, a growing number of academic publications applied a biopolitical perspective to analyzing the pandemic. While this perspective appears logical and instrumental in emergency situations involving issues related to life, death, and the ensuing medicalization of public policies, it does not seem to be universally accepted. For example, a recent edited volume on COVID-19 in Eastern European countries is conceptually framed in the categories of institutionalist theory, including endogenous shocks, political opportunity structures, good and bad governance, agents and principals, incentives, and so forth (Zavadskaya 2023).
