CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2024
| Author | Deng, Xingting |
|---|---|
| Title | Politics Is Not Faraway: Political Melancholia during the COVID-19 Pandemic in China |
| Summary | In an authoritarian regime where access to political participation is limited and public discussion of political issues is forbidden, politics seems to be far from ordinary people. This thesis questions this view with the case of China during the COVID-19 pandemic: the extraordinarily strict COVID policies and the sharp decline in China’s fertility suggest that politics can affect people’s life decisions. The mechanism behind this is what the author proposes as Political Melancholia, meaning that people’s love and support for the government contradicted their anxious and depressed feelings when they encountered various difficulties due to the COVID-19 policies. People who suffer from Political Melancholia may avoid fertility decisions, give up control over life, and vent their repressed grievances through other public issues. The thesis adopts mixed methods. The quantitative analysis of the relationship between government responses to COVID-19 and fertility changes shows that while a high level of government responses mitigated fertility declines worldwide, the opposite trend was found within China. The in-depth interviews with 11 Chinese people under the guidance of Grounded Theory enable the author to illustrate the mechanism of Political Melancholia based on the interviewees’ ambivalent feelings towards the government. By applying a critical approach as such, the research points out the previously neglected influence of politics on people’s lives. It reminds the readers of the pernicious consequences of excessive control over society. |
| Supervisor | Bozoki, Andras |
| Department | Political Science MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2024/deng_xingting.pdf |
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