State Capacity and the Triple COVID-19 Crises: An International Comparison

ABSTRACT

The COVID-19 multidimensional crisis poses a formidable challenge for human society as it is simultaneously and globally damaging the public health, the economic activity and the social wellbeing. The complexity and severity of this crisis has revealed the weaknesses and heterogeneities of States’ capacities to respond to the global pandemic. In this article, we raise the important question about which type of State capacity has been more effective for dealing with the negative effects of the pandemic. Our research proposes a hierarchical cluster analysis of countries that distinguishes three dimensions of the crisis (the health, the economic and the social crises) and measures both the States’ efforts (the ‘inputs’) for containing these crises, and the corresponding effects (the ‘outputs’) that result from the previous inputs. We classify 99 countries worldwide into four groups in 2020. Our results reveal that there is no simple ‘linear’ representation of the COVID-19 multi-crises in terms of State capacity (each cluster of countries has its own and specific State characteristics and crisis effects). We thus reject the hypothesis that strong State capacity was a sine qua non condition for tackling the negative effects of the COVID-19 multi-crises during the first phase of the pandemic. In the end, the global emergency has emphasized the need to rethink the research on State capacity as the previous theoretical constructions have been unable to explain the significative international differences in terms of the public performances in minimizing the negative effects of the pandemic.

Keywords:

• State capacity
• COVID-19
• international taxonomy
• cluster analysis
• global pandemic

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 In year 2020, China was the only country that, according to the estimations of The Economist (2020), surpassed its previous levels of GDP.

2 For an extensive discussion on expansive macroeconomic policy before de COVID crisis see Blanchard and Summers (2019).

3 For a nuanced insight on the ‘syndemic approach’ and its relationship with political and social factors, see Mendenhall (2020).

4 Regarding the standardisation method, we use the ‘range −1 to 1’ which is deemed to be preferable than other methods ‘in most situations’ (Mooi and Sarstedt, 2011, p. 247). The analysis was conducted using SPSS software.

5 The countries not included in the analysis are either insular states with less than one million inhabitants (Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Fiji, Grenada, Kiribati, Maldives, Marshall Islands, Mauritius, Mayotte, Palau, Samoa, Sao Tome and Principe, Seychelles, Solomon Islands, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu), or countries with limited statistical information (Afghanistan, Cuba, Eritrea, Kosovo, Lebanon, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Sudan, Timor-Leste, Uzbekistan, West Bank and Gaza, and Zimbabwe).

6 See descriptive statistics of the data set in Appendix 1.

7 If highly correlated variables are used for cluster analysis, specific aspects covered by these variables will be overrepresented in the outcome. Everitt et al. (2011) and Mooi and Sarstedt (2011) argue that absolute correlations above 0.9 are problematic.

8 SPSS re-scales the distances to a range of 0 to 25. Therefore, the last merging step to a 1-cluster solution takes place at a (re-scaled) distance of 25.

9 Appendix 2 shows the complete set of countries classified by clusters.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Fernando de la Cruz

Fernando de la Cruz is lecturer on global governance in the Department of Political Science and Administration at the Complutense University of Madrid. He is also the head of public finance in the EUROsociAL+ Program of the European Commission managed by the International and Ibero-American Foundation for Public Administrations and Policies.

Sergio Tezanos

Sergio Tezanos is an associate professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Cantabria (Spain) and deputy director of the Ibero-American Research Office in International Development & Cooperation of this university. I was President (and founder) of the Spanish Network of Development Studies (REEDES) between 2011 and 2017, and Vice-President of the European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI) between 2014 and 2017.

Rogelio Madrueño

Rogelio Madrueño is a research associate at the University of Bonn. I have been a research fellow at the Universities of Göttingen, Greifswald, Marburg as well as the Complutense Institute of International Studies and the Dept. of International Development (ODID, University of Oxford). I hold a M.A. studies in Intl. Relations from the Ortega & Gasset URI and B.A. degree in Economics from the UNAM. My field of research is International Economics and Development.