Several members of the Conflict & Change are reflecting on the social and political consequences of Covid-19. Using data from the Integrated Crisis Early Warning System from January 2018 to April 2020, Nils Metternich finds an unprecedented decline in protest activities around the world during the Covid-19 pandemic, and an especially pronounced decline in European and Asian countries. In a piece in the Washington Post’s Monkey Cage, Kristin M. Bakke, Neil Mitchell, and Hannah Smidt situate the current ‘pandemic power grabs’ within a wider trend of growing restrictions on civil society. They warn that such restrictions on civil society make it harder to monitor the quality of governance and hold governments accountable.