The current corona pandemic represents a huge exogenous shock, challenging the resilience and coping mechanisms of society, the political system, but also each individual citizen. We can make use of the quasi-experimental setting that the pandemic provides us with to study preconditions of successful political responses and reforms in times of increasing polarization. We rely on panel data starting before the exponential growth of the pandemic in Germany took off and before the first drastic measures to contain the spread of Covid-19 were implemented, thus providing truly longitudinal analysis, results of which we will disseminate to academic as well as broader audiences.