https://doi.org/10.1177/0011392120963369 Current Sociology 1–18 © The Author(s) 2020 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/0011392120963369 journals.sagepub.com/home/csi CS From global risk to global threat: State capabilities and modernity in times of coronavirus José Maurício Domingues Institute for Social and Political Studies, Rio de Janeiro State University (IESP/UERJ), Brazil Abstract This article tries to understand the manifold impact the coronavirus crisis has had on social life. Beck’s ‘risk society’ is discussed, especially in the pandemic’s transition from a risk to a concrete threat. Moreover, the article shows that the World Health Organization was already framing its discourse in connection with risk, though the nation-state model that dominates global politics prevented it from taking more decisive action, not because nation-states are weak, but because they simply did not ascribe importance to looming pandemics. This is bound to change: politically-steered and policy-oriented state capabilities – taxation, managing, moulding, surveillance, coercion, materialization, along with a legal meta-capability, which never waned, return to the forefront. At least partly in the West and Latin America the security of populations has taken centre-stage. Keynesianism and some sort of state welfarism are making a comeback. Changes in ‘global health governance’ are happening, too. While the precise direction of change is unclear, the article presents some future possibilities. Keywords Coronavirus, global health governance, pandemics, risk and threat, state capabilities Introduction A few decades ago, Ulrich Beck (1992 [1986], 1999 [1998]) developed the concept of risk society, later turning it into a global discussion. Phenomena such as environmental damage Corresponding author: José Maurício Domingues, Institute for Social and Political Studies, Rio de Janeiro State University, IESP- UERJ, Rua da Matriz, 82, Rio de Janeiro/RJ, CEP 22260-100, Brazil. Email: jmdomingues@iesp.uerj.br 963369CSI 0 0 10.1177/0011392120963369Current SociologyDomingues research-article 2020 Article