COVID-19 and the enforcement of safety: Do mandates work? (Katie Attwell)

Our host, Kosta Lucas speaks with Dr Katie Attwell, Senior Lecturer in the School of Social Sciences at The University of Western Australia (UWA). Dr Attwell leads the large interdisciplinary research project “Coronavax: Preparing Community and Government” with colleagues from UWA and Telethon Kids Institute. ‘Vax’ was the Oxford word of the year in 2021, with ‘Strollout’ being the word of the year in Australia according to the Macquarie Dictionary. The beginning of 2022 then became all about mandates, vaccine mandates being the main flashpoint of public contention. But do any of us actually really know what the term “mandate’ really means? We’ve seen the terms “mask mandate”, “vaccine mandate” and even policy mandate, applied to different COVID responses and settings. But what is a mandate really designed to do, how has it been implemented and is it actually effective as a lever of social policy implementation?