The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic is the most significant challenge facing Southeast Asia since the 1997-98 economic crisis. As in the case of the economic crisis, politics determines how countries have responded. Adopting a broadly comparative perspective on the region, speaker Tom Pepinsky (Tisch University Professor, Department of Government, Cornell University) outlines some broad lessons from the first six months of the pandemic about how the region’s political systems, focusing on narratives of “good governance,” political accountability, and state-society relations. These lessons from this comparative approach travel beyond Southeast Asia, and Pepinsky will draw comparisons between the experiences of Southeast Asia and countries such as Germany, Taiwan, Rwanda, and the United States.

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