Federica Duca is a senior researcher at the Public Affairs Research Institute and a research associate at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa. Her research focuses on state-society relations and the relationship between spatial and social forms in relation to wealth and privilege, as well as citizenship and the changing form of the nation-state.

Sarah Meny-Gibert is head of the state reform programme at the Public Affairs Research Institute and is a research associate at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa. Her research interests are in civil service reform and its histories, the sociology of public bureaucracies, and state-citizen relations in the governance of public education.

Introduction - A 'Rapid Test': States and Societies Through the Lens of the COVID-19 Pandemic Part I: Decentering the Pandemic 1. 'The Country's Problem Is Not the Coronavirus': Multiple Crises in Bolivia 2. Recentering the Necropolitics of COVID-19: A Perspective from Angola 3. COVID-19 and Non-State People: Uncompromised Wild Food Consumption in Binga, Zimbabwe Part II: Exclusion and Inequality 4. Viral Contradictions: Canadian Exceptionalism and COVID-19 5. Unequal Pandemics: COVID-19 in Jamaica 6. Protecting the Vulnerable? COVID-19 Policy in Sweden Part III: State Capacity and Legitimacy 7. Brazil: Tragedy and Political Choices in the Face of COVID-19 8. COVID-19 and Political Crisis: State Capacity and Defiance in Argentina9. Negotiating Ritual Life in Indonesia: State and Worship in Times of COVID-19 Part IV: Trust, Solidarity and Time 10. Mutations of Democracy: Aotearoa New Zealand's COVID-19 Response11. Populist Governance in Times of Crisis: COVID-19 in the Czech Republic 12. Rallying the Nation: Institutional Trust and South Africa's Pandemic Experience