COVID-19: SHIFTING GLOBAL SOCIO-ECONOMIC DYNAMICS AND FOREIGN POLICY DECISION-MAKING; SECOND IMAGE REINFORCED

Abstract

Pandemic has again hit humankind hard in the form of Covid-19 and its variants. COVID-19 did not take long in transforming from
an epidemic to a pandemic, and affected countries in unprecedented and undocumented ways. Socioeconomic dynamics,
which play significant role in policy making in any society, have been considerably affected, unearthing the flaws of policy making
process. This research studies the relation between the pandemic and global socioeconomic dynamics, and their impact on the
foreign policy making of the states. Kenneth Waltz’s level of analysis approach within structural realism provides the basis to
analyse the role of second level i.e, the state - mentioned as second image by Waltz. This research reinforces the importance of second
image and argues (using the case studies of USA and China) that in the post Covid world, the relevance of second image in states’
foreign policy making is reinforced.