Sustaining Asia’s development amidst the COVID-19 pandemic: capacity development and governance innovation

ABSTRACT

Resilience is of paramount importance in dealing with a prolonged pandemic such as COVID-19, in which all countries inevitable suffer through multiple stages of adversity. Many Asian countries were initially hard hit by the pandemic, but some of them displayed the remarkable ability to withstand these shocks, overcome despair, and bounce back quickly. This special issue examines two aspects of resilience building in policy responses to crises such as COVID-19 – capacity development and governance innovation. Capacity can be a key factor in determining the effectiveness of health emergency preparedness, surveillance, response, and recovery systems for unprecedented public health crises like COVID-19, and governance innovation also plays a key role in resilience building by strengthening the roles of non-government actors in public health crises, the efficacy of science-policymaking interactions, and the uses of disruptive technologies.

KEYWORDS:

• Policy capacity
• governance innovation
• resilience
• COVID-19
• crisis responses
• comparative analysis

Introduction

Although it started as a public health crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic has had a number of devastating consequences beyond public health. For example, many developing countries in Asia experienced their sharpest economic contractions since 2020, ending a decade of strong economic growth. According to Asian Development Bank (ADB) estimates, about 22% of the global pandemic-related economic loss was incurred by Asian developing economies, with an estimated impact of between $1.3 trillion and $2.0 trillion – or 5.7% to 8.5% of developing Asia’s GDP (ADB,2020). International trade also declined significantly due to the border closures and extended lockdowns. More importantly, the pandemic may have dealt a significant blow to poverty reduction efforts in many Asian developing countries. In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic was projected to have increased the number of people living in poverty within developing Asia by 162 million for those living on less than $3.20/day, and by 78 million for those living on less than $1.90/day in 2020 (Matinez et al., 2020).

Many Asian governments responded rapidly to the pandemic, and a number of them even received global recognition for their success in curtailing the spread of the virus. However, national pandemic responses (and their effectiveness) vary greatly. This may be partly due to different levels of prior experience with similar public health crises, the capacity of their healthcare systems, and differences in strategic approach to key trade-offs embedded in their policy responses. On one hand, although strict disease containment measures can be effective in curtailing the spread of COVID-19, these can have devastating economic and social consequences for many Asian developing countries with large numbers of urban daily wage workers. On the other hand, less stringent measures may give rise to large surges in infections that could overwhelm entire healthcare systems or cause political upheaval.

One key aspect that has received insufficient attention in existing literature is the prospect of building resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic. Many Asian countries were initially hard hit by the pandemic, but some of them displayed the remarkable ability to withstand these shocks, overcome despair, and bounce back quickly. Resilience is especially important in dealing with a prolonged pandemic such as COVID-19, in which all countries inevitable suffer through multiple stages of adversity.

The challenges involved in combating the COVID-19 pandemic could build resilience for dealing with similar public health crises in the future. More importantly, this unprecedented pandemic provides an opportunity to make fundamental policy changes with long-lasting impacts, and to enhance national resilience in order to improve long-term growth prospects. Governance – defined as the structures and processes involved in decision-making, accountability, control of the behaviour of an entity – may significantly limit policy options, and may potentially create obstacles where there is mismatch between quality of governance and the choice of policy options.

This special issue examines two aspects of resilience building in policy responses to crises such as COVID-19 – capacity development and governance innovation. Policy capacity is the sum of ‘skills and resources – or competences and capabilities – necessary to perform policy functions’. Capacity can be a major determinant of the effectiveness of health emergency preparedness, surveillance, response, and recovery systems for unprecedented public health crises like COVID-19; and it can play a key role in building resilience.

Governance innovation also plays a key role in resilience building, with impacts beyond public health. Firstly, the pandemic challenged existing patterns for the roles of civil society and other NGOs in policy-making and policy implementation in public health crises. Secondly, there is now heightened attention on science-policymaking interactions in the context of high levels of uncertainty and lack of scientific evidence. Thirdly, the governance of advancements in disruptive technologies can be challenging because the applications of such technologies can create data security and privacy concerns even as they help in the fight against COVID-19.

Comparative perspectives on the pandemic and policy responses in Asia

Although nearly two years has passed since the initial outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, the global disruption caused by this disease still continues. Countries have experienced recurrent waves of this disease, and still face epidemiological, political, economic, social, and diplomatic challenges. Countries have responded in different ways to the pandemic, and there is no single determinant that explains their responses. Moreover, there is seemingly no single ‘right’ response to the pandemic, which often leads to a contingency perspective on pandemic crisis response.

The severity, timing, and longevity of the waves of COVID-19 infections appear to vary by region. The pandemic seems to be more severe in Europe and South America than in Asia and Africa, particularly when measured in terms of the number of infections per million people. That being said, the impact of COVID-10 in North America and Europe began to lessen towards the end of 2020 when vaccinations became widespread. Nevertheless, the overall impact of the disease in Asia and Africa has been much milder than in Europe and the Americas. In Asia, there were no noticeable surges in the number infections throughout 2020 and 2021, prior to a surge in the spring of 2021 and the surge caused by the Delta variant in the summer of 2021.

Relative to other regions, waves of infections in Asia appear to be much less prolonged. Infection curves for Asian countries are also smoother and flatter, with an absence of multiple peaks spread over long periods that are characteristic of infection curves elsewhere.

In 2020, there was no significant surge in the number of daily confirmed cases per million people in Asia, even as there were severe surges in other regions such as in the spring of 2020 (Europe and North America), the summer of 2020 (North America and South America), and the winter of 2020 (Europe, North America, and South America). Even the first significant surge in Asia in the spring of 2021 that started in late March 2021 quickly peaked in early May (at approximately 107 confirmed daily cases per million on 5 May 2021) and then flattened in mid-June 2021 (at 33.4 confirmed daily cases per million on 13 June 2021). It took approximately 40 days for this surge to flatten from its peak, while infection curves in Europe and North America have yet to bottom out as a result of continual waves of infections in winter 2020 and spring 2021. This pattern suggests that Asian countries were better able to control the spread of infections compared to other regions.

Asian responses to the pandemic

It is challenging to identify uniquely successful features in the policy responses of Asian countries because their policy responses differ as much from each other as they do from non-Asian countries. Nevertheless, there are some commonalities in the pandemic responses of Asian countries (Moon, 2021). Relative to countries in other regions, Asian countries paid closer attention to the outbreak in China, and were more proactive in their policy responses. Not only are Asian countries geographically closer to China, where the disease was first discovered; but many of them had previously been affected by similar infectious diseases such as SARS and other types of influenza. For these reasons, many Asian governments paid close attention to the developing situation in Mainland China and were proactive in their policy responses.

Using a case study based on South Korea, Moon (2020) identifies agility or agile responses as a critical factor in the country’s effective containment and mitigation of COVID-19 infections, particularly because the SARS‑CoV‑2 is much more contagious than similar viruses. Learning from its painful experience with MERS in 2015, the South Korean government immediately took proactive steps to develop and prepare testing kits, introduce thorough epidemiological investigations, and minimize in-hospital infections. South Korea’s experience with MERS and its institutional memories were important foundations for its rapid and effective policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic (Lee et al., 2020; Moon, 2020).

Similarly, after their experiences with other infectious diseases such as SARS and swine influenza (SI), many other Asian countries paid close attention to the COVID-19 outbreak and its potential threat to their public health systems. Some countries bordering introduced aggressive measures early in the pandemic such as border closures to reduce the risk of importing the virus. Of course, there are big national differences in pandemic severity and policy responses, even within Asia. Some countries such as Vietnam, Taiwan, North Korea, and New Zealand introduced severe restrictions such as border closures to head off the import of COVID-19. These and many other countries also imposed lockdowns, travel restrictions, and social gatherings restrictions to slow the spread of COVID-19 and preserve public health capacity. With its low-cost mitigation model that involved immediate restrictive actions such as border and school closures as well as close central-local policy coordination, Vietnam effectively controlled the pandemic from the beginning. Similarly, the Thai military government introduced proactive and restrictive policy measures as part of its pandemic response.

Unfortunately, restrictive measures are neither perfect nor sustainable. Even countries with effective early responses to the pandemic have experienced sharp spikes in daily infections caused by the Delta variant. There are also ongoing debates on the trade-offs between democratic values and effective policy responses, as well as individual rights and societal safety. Although centralized, aggressive policy responses by strong governments could effectively control the pandemic situation for a period of time, some authoritarian governments may use the pandemic as an excuse to impose policies such as social gathering restrictions that constrain democratic values and individual political freedoms.

There are large national variations in the stringency of national policy responses. Even accounting for national differences in the severity of COVID-19 outbreaks, the stringency of policy responses for Asian countries appear to be much higher than others. As of 31 July 2021, for example, the stringency index for India was 81.9, and Malaysia, mainland China, the Philippines, and Taiwan scored 80.6, 79.2, 71.8, and 71.3 respectively. It is possible for policy stringency to be driven by the severity of COVID-19 in a country as social and political pressures grow for aggressive and restrictive policy measures, but existing political systems and the receptivity of national populations to strict policy measures are also important factors that affect the policy choices of governments.

In addition to immediate and proactive policy actions by governments, the communitarian culture present in many Asian countries is arguably a unique element that makes their populations more likely to comply with nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) such as social distancing, mask-wearing, and personal sanitization. The development of the pandemic in many Asian countries appear to support Etzioni’s (2020) argument that communitarian countries, where communitarian and social benefits are valued as much as individual benefits and rights, are likely to mitigate the pandemic more effectively than countries with more individualistic cultures.

Capacity and governance issues in policy responses

The policy response of each country is often driven by various political, administrative, economic, social, and even international factors. Determining factors include political regimes and institutional arrangements, public health and social policies, intergovernmental relations (IGRs), public leadership, policy learning, citizenship, and others. For example, a recent book edited by Greer et al. (2021) posits several possible causal relationships and research questions, including the impact of regime type on the management of pandemic information, regime type on the effective execution of policy responses, social policy on the effectiveness of health policy responses, political systems on pandemic responses, federalism on policy responses, and public health capacity on the effectiveness of policy responses.

Several issues are raised in the comparison and analysis of how different countries respond to the pandemic. These include: 1) centralization versus decentralization, 2) policy transparency versus non-transparency, 3) government versus citizens, 4) political factors versus scientific facts, and 5) policy versus technology.

Centralization versus decentralization

The centralization thesis offers an important institutional implication for decision-making and crisis management. Taking a contingency perspective, ‘T Hart et al. (1993) suggest various conditions for alternative patterns of responses to crisis situations by considering three major elements of a crisis – severe threat, time pressure, and high uncertainty. It is unclear if centralized systems are more effective than decentralized ones in mitigating the COVID-19 pandemic. A recent study (Park et al., 2020) suggests that decentralized (networked) systems likely perform better than centralized ones in situations of higher severity, while centralized systems perform better in situations with higher levels of urgency. Although debate on institutional arrangements is expected to continue, both inter- and intra-governmental coordination, as well as institutional capacities, are critical to the effectiveness of COVID-19 mitigation efforts (Kuhlmann et al., 2021; Moon, 2021).

Policy transparency versus non-transparency

Policy transparency is often considered a critical factor for public trust in government in pandemics, during which the public easily becomes fearful, uneasy, and distrustful. Governments often fabricate or hide statistics regarding the number of infections or deaths to avoid political damage. Many believe authoritarian regimes often restrict unfavourable information and create opaque policies, but fabrication and censorship of sensitive data occur even in democratic countries. As Moon (2020) suggests, policy transparency boosts public trust in the long run, even if it may hurt public confidence in government pandemic policy responses in the short term.

Governments versus citizens

Because a pandemic presents a wicked problem, it is not something that governments can handle by themselves. A pandemic cannot be easily resolved without active and voluntary citizen participation in NPIs. In fact, governments need to facilitate co-production of pandemic response measures with citizens (Moon, 2020; Steen & Brandsen, 2020), and promote collaborative governance with businesses, private think tanks, non-profit organizations, and civic groups to solve various policy challenges. In particular, citizens who share communitarian values and who appreciate the social and community benefits of mask wearing and social distancing have been crucial to the effective management of the COVID-19 pandemic in many Asian countries.

Political factors versus scientific facts

Evidence-based decisions are of focal interest to those who want to make objective and professional policy decisions. In reality, however, political partisanship often distorts and disrupts policy-making processes. In a number of countries, partisanship and overpoliticization of the pandemic have led to policy blunders either through faulty decisions or missed opportunities. For example, the highly populist tendencies of political leaders in countries such as Brazil and the U.S. contaminated policy-making processes and their own experts were overruled on pandemic policy responses. Election cycles or salient events such as the Olympic Games are also important events that often cause policy-makers to place political considerations above scientific facts. Putting science above politics is critical for crisis management (Comfort, 2007; Moon, 2020), particularly because policy-makers have to cope with volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA). A recent editorial titled ‘Dying in a Leadership Vacuum’ in the New England Journal of Medicine (The Editors, 2020) discusses the impact of political leadership in the pandemic. Poor leadership often politicizes policy decisions, undermines the technological and social capacities of countries, and eventually pushes society to the brink of disaster.

Policy versus digital technology

Applications of digital technologies have been considered powerful tools in the fight against the pandemic in the form of technological solutions to test, trace, and treat patients. Many Asian countries actively used mobile phones to broadcast pandemic-related alerts, and mobile apps and QR codes to aid epidemiological investigations. Although there are differences in the extent to which countries tap on various digital technologies, an increasing number of countries have developed and used various digital technology-based solutions including dashboards, contact tracing apps, chatbots, and other online services to expand digital government services (UNDESA, 2020).

Contribution of this special issue

The governments of a number of Asian countries have been lauded for their handling of the pandemic, and the involvement of societal actors is one of the most salient attributes of the pandemic policy responses in Asia. Prateek et al. (2021) present two examples from India in which civil society actors played the role of policy entrepreneurs to put issues regarding vulnerable populations on the policy agenda by expanding policy spaces in the two most important sectors of the economy – agriculture and forestry; and in lobbying for changes in policy implementation under conditions of unprecedented uncertainty during the country’s lockdown.

Their research shows that civil society actors can make multifaceted contributions towards resilience building by strengthening capacity across six types of spaces: conceptual space through reframing of issues, bureaucratic and government space through sustained advocacy in policy networks, invited space through submissions and communications with key government agencies, popular space through advocacy on social media platforms, and practical space through assessment studies. The wide array of spaces in which civil society actors are able to operate offers opportunities for governance innovation beyond state actors and markets that operate under conditions of significant uncertainty during the pandemic.

The role of civil society in capacity development is also evident in Hong Kong (Wong, 2021). When Hong Kong was first hit by COVID-19 in early 2020, the city was experiencing ongoing protests against the proposed Extradition Bill, and there was much conflict between the state and civil society. In addition to an autonomous bureaucracy, the presence of a strong civil society to help in the fight against COVID-19 has been a key contributing factor in resilience building for effective pandemic response.

Using the policy capacity framework and Political Nexus Triads (PNT), the article highlights the importance of state-society interactions in the creation of effective policy responses, and the complementarity between state and non-state actors in the co-production of public policies to build resilience. It points out an avenue for governance innovation, in which policy responses can be more appropriately understood as the co-production and co-governing that arise from state-society interactions – with civil society, bureaucrats, and politicians forming the three pillars of governance. Such governance innovation can be especially critical for weak states.

Gaps in policy capacity can greatly hinder the adoption of effective policy responses to COVID-19. Based on their research into social safety nets during the pandemic, Asmorowati et al. (2021) point out that gaps in policy capacity at the institutional level, as well as inefficiencies and lack of effectiveness, affect confidence in how governments respond to crisis events such as COVID-19. In Indonesia, decentralization has given rise to recurring tensions between national and local governments, disjunctures between the mode of governance and institutional capacity, and inadequate capacity at organizational and system levels.

The article underscores the importance of human agency as a determining factor for capacity building and governance innovation. Based on an in-depth analysis of Indonesia’s social welfare system, their research shows that, despite glaring inefficiencies in and constraints on institutional policy capacity, positive outcomes can still be achieved if individuals are willing to negotiate, cooperate, and navigate the gaps in poorly constructed policies, inefficient systems, or insufficient resources. Their analysis calls for more emphasis on improving individual capacity in pandemic policy responses and in resilience building.

Similarly, Sajadi and Harley (2021) find that a key stumbling block for effective policy responses to COVID-19 pandemic in Iran is the gap in the policy capacity. They argue that Iran’s initial responses to COVID-19 were marred by ineffective coordination among key agencies, inefficient public engagement, and inconsistencies in priority setting. This is evidenced by the slow, inefficient, and often internally contradictory policy responses. The article shows that insufficient cooperation and coordination, a deeply rooted problem before and during the crisis, prevented effective pandemic response; and highlights the importance of connective capacity among agencies and across sectors.

Their research findings highlight avenues for capacity development and governance to overcome deficiencies in pandemic policy response in authoritarian systems such as in Iran, for example, by developing a comprehensive strategy for crisis management, expanding the use of information and communication technologies, engaging the community in pandemic response, promoting resilience within communities, and developing community-oriented pandemic management programmes.

The importance of capacity building and governance innovation in combating the pandemic can clearly be seen in the case of the South Korea (Oh, 2021). After the country suffered the largest MERS outbreak outside of the Middle East, the government made a number of important improvements in capacity development and governance innovation. As a result, the country’s five pillars of crisis management provide strategic agility and flexibility within its hierarchical model of government, allowing crisis-friendly partnerships and swift collaboration to occur among key actors in order to manage public policy challenges. This provides a compelling explanation of South Korea’s effective COVID-19 response.

South Korea’s development of infectious disease management policies illustrates the possibility of building resilience after public health crises. Drawing from its successes and mistakes with SARS and MERS, the country greatly enhanced its crisis management capacity by adding agility, increasing collaborative capacity, and strengthening institutional foundations. South Korea’s experience also presents an alternative to the top-down approach employed by a number of Asian countries in their pandemic response.

Although emerging technologies provide important tools to combat the pandemic, their development and application cannot be taken for granted. Shi et al. (2021) show that, while top-down and bottom-up approaches have been widely used in the development of smart city initiatives, each entails serious shortfalls and limitations – as can be seen in the development of the health code in China. An unpreceded pandemic such as COVID-19 can stimulate the development of innovative approaches and measures that accelerate smart cities (SC) initiatives.

This article describes a unique integration of top-down and bottom-up approaches in the implementation of SC initiatives. The authors’ analysis demonstrates that China’s health code might not have materialized had it not been initiated as a nation-wide project. At the same time, it was important that top-down approaches could be introduced as required to overcome bottlenecks inherent in any bottom-up approach. The sequencing of these two approaches allowed different actors to assume prominent roles at different stages of the development of China’s health code.

The papers by Withers et al. (2021), as well as Beh and Lin (2021), underscore the importance of capacity development and governance innovation in sectors hardest hit by the pandemic. COVID-19 has disrupted the flow of international remittance on which many South Asian economies depend. These remittances from emigrants had inadvertently put off the need for structural reforms, aggravated unemployment, and undermined sustainable growth.

The sharp decline in remittances provides an opportunity for these economies to build resilience by rebuilding underperforming economic sectors, and by undertaking necessary structural reforms to promote inclusive local development. The article suggests that South Asian governments should invest in skill recognition, certification, and training programs for repatriated workers in the short run; and that they should seize the opportunity presented by COVID-19 to rethink some policies in order to build resilience in the long run, and to formulate and implement policies that accelerate local economic development and employment creation.

The tourism sector is among those hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, and the prolonged pandemic can have devastating consequences on the economies of major Asian tourism destinations like Malaysia, Thailand, and Singapore. Using data obtained from seven ASEAN countries, Beh and Lin (2021) show a positive and significant correlation between international tourism arrivals and cumulative COVID-19 infections and deaths, which means that international border closures are effective against the spread of COVID-19 within countries.

Their research offers some important insights into key policy issues concerning the survival and revival of the tourism sector in countries dependent on tourism. The tourism industry needs to work closely with governments to establish health and sanitary protocols, as well as certifications for clean and safe practices and establishments. These are crucial steps to restore trust and confidence in the travel and tourism sector. At the same time, governments will need to ensure that destination communities believe that that the benefits of returning tourists outweigh potential health risks.

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Notes on contributors

M. Jae Moon

M. Jae Moon is Dean of the College of Social Sciences and Professor of the Department of Public Administration as well as Director of the Institute for Future Government at Yonsei University. His research interests include digital government, public management, and comparative public administration. He is currently working on applications of digital technologies in the public sector and alternative solutions to wicked policy problems like COVID-19.

Xun Wu

Xun Wu is Professor of the Division of Public Policy at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology as well as the Co-Director of China-Russia Eurasian Studies Center. His research interests include technology and innovation policy, water resource management, health policy reform, and anti-corruption.