German Law Journal 1655 processes for these vaccines have been taken less time than ever before in modern medical history. Exactly how any given polity parses the balance of interests between the collective and the individual is likely to be a function of specific national or other contexts. An argument for the application of the principle of Ubuntu—or an ethic of care and respect for humanity—in the context of the application of South African constitutional rights to the question of vaccination nicely illustrates the latter point.130 These are ethical questions, for sure, but also questions about what we owe each other in a specific social context, not as a matter of ideal theory or in view of universal principles, but in practical terms. For these purposes, rationalizing decision-making in relation to intrusions into private life within a framing of citizenship as social membership is a productive approach. It offers a clear pathway to understanding how these interests can best be balanced against each other, whilst at the same time adopting an intersectional analysis which takes into consideration differential vaccination rates between different social and ethnic groups, given that these often stem from unequal access as well as distrust of the state and medical institutions. F. The Side-lining of Democracy: The Challenge of Oversight of Decision-making in a Crisis for Citizens and Their Representatives Given the centrality of political citizenship and associated civil liberties, such as freedom of expression and of assembly, to the constitutional and democratic foundations of many polities, framing key questions about the impact of the pandemic in the political domain in terms that combine citizenship and constitutional principles is both an important and a relatively straightforward task. Political citizenship is intimately connected with questions of political participation and the legitimacy of decision-making. It is vital, therefore, to explore this issue in the context of a syndemic analysis of COVID-19. For example, the pandemic has the capacity to interrupt the normal lines of political participation. It can do this through its impact on elections and campaigning and other similar episodic events such as referendums.131 It may also disrupt both non-violent civil resistance or protest as an expression of citizenship132 and armed conflict aimed at political change,133 if individuals and groups can no longer safely gather in person because of fears of contagion. A number of observatories have been tracking the impacts of the pandemic on all aspects of the political process, including comparing the incidence of protest and conflict during the pandemic to the period immediately before as well as assessing the measures taken either to support or to repress political action.134 Early findings, based thus far largely on anecdotal evidence, seemed to indicate a 130 Tanya Calitz, Constitutional Rights in South Africa Protect Against Mandatory COVID-19 Vaccination, HEALTH AND HUM. RTS. J. BLOG (Apr. 21, 2021), https://www.hhrjournal.org/2021/04/constitutional-rights-in-south-africa-protectagainst-mandatory-covid-19-vaccination/. 131 See , e.g., the highly politicized referendum in Chile on whether to draft a new Constitution replacing the Pinochet-era constitution that was postponed from April, 2020, until October, 2020, as a result of the pandemic. This referendum was intended to build upon the widespread protests that occurred in Chile in the latter months of 2019, and the process should, as agreed in the referendum, include a high level of citizen participation and involvement involving an elected constituent assembly, and some now fear that the momentum towards reform has dissipated because of the conditions caused by the pandemic. See, for discussion and background, Alexander Hudson & Rodolfo Disi Pavlic, The Constitutional Reform Referendum in Chile: Balancing Democracy and Elite Accommodation, INT’L CONST. L. BLOG (Sep. 23, 2020), http://www. iconnectblog.com/2020/09/the-constitutional-reform-referendum-in-chile-balancing-democracy-and-elite-accommodation/. 132 Erica Chenoweth, The Future of Nonviolent Resistance, 31(3) J. DEMOCRACY 69 (2020). 133 Melissa Pavlik, A Great and Sudden Change: The Global Political Violence Landscape Before and After the COVID-19 Pandemic, ACLED (Aug. 4, 2020), https://acleddata.com/2020/08/04/a-great-and-sudden-change-the-global-politicalviolence-landscape-before-and-after-the-covid-19-pandemic/. 134 For example, COVID-19 Disorder Tracker, ACLED, https://acleddata.com/analysis/covid-19-disorder-tracker/; Global Protest Tracker, CARNEGIE ENDOWMENT FOR INT’L PEACE, https://carnegieendowment.org/publications/interactive/protesttracker; Democracy During Pandemic, FREEDOM HOUSE, https://freedomhouse.org/issues/democracy-during-pandemic; Global State of Democracy Indices, INTERNATIONAL IDEA, https://www.idea.int/gsod-indices/#/indices/world-map; on https://doi.org/10.1017/glj.2021.77 Published online by Cambridge University Press