Governments’ Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic

“COVID-19” or “the pandemic” is often referred to as a “novel Coronavirus” because almost everything about it has been startlingly new – “novel.” When COVID-19 was first identified late in 2019, scientists around the globe knew almost nothing about it. The disease’s origins, seriousness of infection, methods or rates of transmission, how to prevent or treat it, its long-term health side effects, if contracting the disease would create immunity or how long immunity would last for different degrees of infection were mysteries (Dabrowska et al., 2020). Therefore, at the outset, government officials had almost no basis for developing and implementing public health policy approaches and even less ability to propose “balanced” public health-economic public policy approaches (Moon, 2020).

As scientists began to learn about the danger that COVID-19 infection represented to individuals, and about “community spread” through airborne and surface transmission, public health strategies became apparent: social distance, wearing masks, using hand sanitizer, and regularly washing hands. As scientists began to learn about different rates of infection and consequences of infection in certain sub-populations, public officials started to know where they should emphasize public health interventions (International Monetary Fund, 2020). Testing and tracing were core strategic policy tools (Ritchie & Roser, 2020).

But these public health approaches required changes in individuals’ and families’ behaviors – changes that many people in countries world-wide deemed unwanted and unneeded. Many did not believe that the COVID-19 was a serious threat to them or their communities, and many understood that effective public health policy approaches would have serious negative impacts on personal freedoms and economic activity. People wanted “a silver bullet” solution – not interference in their lives and livelihoods. Governments around the world had to make policy decisions with little knowledge and considerable public opposition (Bouckaert et al, 2020; Christensen & Laegreid, 2020). Inevitably, different national and local governments took widely differing approaches to dealing with COVID-19 (BallotPedia, 2021. Bremmer, 2020; Dzigbede et al., 2020).

Then, as medical scientists and public officials were starting to learn about the disease and effective strategies for containing it in late 2020 and in the early months of 2021, several new variants were identified. These new variants, which are commonly known by where they were first recognized, including the U.K., South Africa and Brazil variants, began gaining footholds in countries around the world. These variants – and others as time passes – are more transmissible, possibly more deadly, and are not as well protected against by currently-approved vaccines. These new variants are causing huge surges in new cases and are taking huge tolls in human lives.

At the time that this special issue of The International Journal of Public Administration was written, the trajectory of the disease and its variants, and governments’ responses to them had taken many different shapes and forms. “Pandemic fatigue” and widespread availability of vaccines in some countries have caused relaxed government restrictions on social distancing and other preventive public health strategies nearly universally despite continuing waves of new cases, hospitalizations, and deaths. For example, California, the most populous state in the US, has “unveiled a sweeping reopening plan for June 15” (Money & Rong-Gong Lin, 2021).

There are multiple other reasons why governments’ responses have varied. For example, while acknowledging that “democracies” and “authoritarian states” are only points on a continuum, it holds that some authoritarian-leaning governments have been able to impose restrictions on behaviors in their populations that most democratic-leaning governments could not – or at least not for very long. Differences in government structures and ideologies, however, only begin to explain why countries have taken vastly different approaches, particularly to “closing down” and testing and tracing (Serikbayeva et al., 2021, included in this issue). And it is premature to assert the outcomes of the dramatically different government approaches. Preliminary data are becoming available about the effectiveness of different policy approaches, but the story is still in its infancy. As the issue is being assembled, spikes are recurring is areas where the disease had been waning (Webeck & Angst, 2020). We will not be able to know true outcomes for years.

Unquestionably, this pandemic has become an enormous challenge to governments’ decision-making processes and has created deep community and political divisions and strife in some countries (Rothwell & Makridis, 2020). The word “unprecedented” has been used so often in the past year that it has lost its meaning – it has become trite. This special issue attempts to present a compendium of early governments’ efforts – efforts through 2020 – to prevent, contain, and treat COVID-19. Responding to this Coronavirus is proving to be a real-life manifestation of “surprise management theory in-use” (Farazmand, 2003, 2009). Governments have had to learn through on-the-ground experience and less-than-rigorous experiments (Dabrowska et al., 2020) with minimal information and faced with considerable misinformation. It has been necessary to learn through on-the-ground experience and applied research – trial-and error in real time. Therefore, the need for “surprise management.”

… surprise management theory as the only conceivable way to building degrees of capacity in advance with anticipation of unknowns, surprises, and more surprises.” The problem is human nature and social systems dynamics … that does not allow humans and institutions to stay in such a state of homeostasis long enough to persevere, adapt to, and overcome unfolding and evolving challenges such as COVID-19 or any other similar threats. We humans simply forget, or easily overlook, celebrate success too soon, and institutions --like American federal government and its leadership or other institutions across the globe--do not like to live with an “inconvenient state of mind” or conditions where institutions and organizations operate--we want to get out so fast to forget it was there in the first place (Farazmand, 2020).

Few governments have proven adept at “surprise management.” With the pandemic, elected, appointed, and permanent officials have had to make unpopular decisions with minimal and often-changing input about the nature of the disease and which steps would yield the most beneficial results efficiently. Indeed, there has been considerable disagreement about which measures best represent “successful” government interventions, to a large degree because of the disease’s impacts on the public health and the economy, citizen resistance, and because knowledge about the disease is still limited (Wallace-Wells, 2021). A partial list of possible measures of successful responses would include:

Number of cases

Number of cases per population

Changes over periods of time in the number of cases

Number of hospitalizations

Number of hospitalizations per population

Number of hospitalizations per the number of cases

Changes in the number of hospitalizations

Infection rate (% of tests positive)

Change in % of tests positive

Number of ICU patients

Number of ICU patients per population

Change in number of ICU patients

Number of recovered patients

Number of recovered patients per population

Number of recovered patients per cases

Number of people with “long haul” symptoms (Komaroff, 2020)

Impact of the long-haul symptoms on recovery

Impact of long-haul symptoms on longevity

And, of course also:

Number of (COVID-related) deaths

Number of deaths per cases

Number of deaths per population

Each of these metrics has some usefulness, but none is a sufficient single measure of the effectiveness of governments. For example:

Number of cases and number of cases per population: The number of cases depends heavily on the number of tests conducted, the accuracy of the tests, and which populations are tested (e.g., only older people; no people with underlying health conditions; few or no minority populations).

Infection rate and change in % of tests positive. Same as for number of cases and number of cases per population.

Number of (COVID-related) deaths and number of deaths per cases. If a patient with COVID-19 AND other diseases (e.g., history of heart or lung disease) dies, was COVID-19 or the other disease the primary cause of death? Can this be determined accurately without significant effort? And, if the measure is number of deaths per cases, the same problems arise as mentioned in the first sub-paragraph above. The validity of the number depends on the accuracy of the number of cases and the accuracy of the number of deaths.

Few – or perhaps no – metrics are without limitations and critics – even those that initially appear unassailable. In addition to the measurement problems mentioned above, different metrics represent the effectiveness of different parts of a government’s response system. Governments often emphasize their accomplishments using metrics that show their approach in the best light.

Common themes and questions

The articles in this issue present divergent viewpoints from multiple nations, yet there are common themes and questions. One recurrent theme is the need for individuals to decide for themselves how they will approach the often-frightening reality of COVID-19. Not all communities have equal capacity to manage their relationships with the disease.

As has been mentioned, different types of governance raise different questions about disease management. Governments of all “flavors” ultimately need to develop citizen consensus and cooperation in order to achieve long-term success to control the pandemic (Kettle, 2020).

A second common factor is the value of community solidarity versus the primacy of individualism within a society. Some response decisions are driven by a motive to protect others in the wider community, including concern for the elderly, people with compromised immune systems, and front-line essential workers who cannot shelter in place because they provide the food, provide health care, and drive public transit vehicles. Their incidence of disease has been higher than among those who can safely work from home with lower exposure to the circulating virus. Yet other people express concerns about their liberty, the right to go where they please, when they please, and to not wear a mask. In some places these have become major political issues that have resulted in stark individualism, leading to, for example, massive spring break beach parties and summer motorcycle rallies, which caused resurgences of contagion just when it was thought they had begun to subside.

Many people strictly have adhered to public health guidelines to protect their loved friends and family. The focus has been on keeping contagion at bay in their household and among extended families and friendship groups. Thus, many religious and secular holidays have been celebrated in solitude or by Zoom, raising stress levels and the sense of loneliness. Many people have remained in strict isolation out of fear of the disease and its impact on themselves. The result of both motivations has been strict quarantines that have brought parts of the economy to a halt, while stimulating new lines of commerce, like meal delivery, on-line shopping and its concomitant Amazon deliveries.

A third factor is the state’s capacity to provide pandemic mitigation services (Centers for Disease Control, 2020). Initially all nations had inadequate capacity for testing, but a number of smaller nations quickly implemented community testing and contact tracing, using both community solidarity and communication technology to try to get ahead of the disease, including an app that notified phone users when they had been near someone who tested positive (Moon, 2020). In most societies, social distancing has not been possible for the homeless, the poor living in crowded conditions, prisoners and people in long-term care facilities. Many of these became early victims of COVID-19 and therefore early recipients of the vaccine in nations with an adequate vaccine supply. An international effort was needed to share the vaccine with nations without their own medical research infrastructure. Definitive medical care for those who become infected had to be developed as the disease was being studied (The Economist, 2020). Novel approaches like having patients lie face down to take the pressure off their lungs, and dosing the ill with the plasma of those who had survived the disease, have proven relatively effective. A variety of off-label uses of existing medications have had varied outcomes, with remdesivir shortening time to recovery in hospitalized patients (Beigel et al., 2020), and dexamethasone demonstrating effectiveness in countering cytokine storms in COVID-19 patients (Harvard Medical School, 2021), while others showed no benefit.

In wealthier Western nations there has been a larger capacity for managing the disease from a technical perspective, but in many of these countries, citizens have refused to accept limitations on their lives. Many have not believed that the likelihood of disease prevention is high enough to justify their personal sacrifice of liberty. Others have not believed that there is compelling scientific evidence of the effectiveness of the mandated activities: wear a mask, keep six feet apart, and wash hands. Still others have developed or believed conspiracy theories about nefarious reasons why the government closed down the economy, closed the schools and churches and restricted public gatherings. There have been endless debates over baseless “beliefs” in the virus, in the pandemic, in the efficacy of the restrictions (Johnson 2020).

“High tell tactics” have been used together with “high sell tactics” (developing community consensus) effectively in many nations. In Japan, for example, community solidarity has led to high levels of compliance without strong enforcement measures, yet there have been resisters even there (Aoki, in this issue). In Iran, culture and religion-based compliance has been high, but economy-driven social resistance has emerged (Farazmand and Danaeefard, in this issue). In free-spirited California, health officers and city councils have used existing laws to act quickly (“high tell”) with Santa Clara County having the first lock-down in the nation (Brown and Edwards, in this issue). These local officials worked to develop a consensus later as the evidence about disease severity and virulence developed at local medical research centers. Mask wearing and social distancing have been widely practiced based on “common sense,” yet resistance is still found, notably among the younger.

The role of social capital versus economic determinism has been another determining factor in community responses to COVID-19. Many people could work from home, continue their income and thereby make compliance with public health orders easy. The result has been a relatively low incidence of illness among these mostly middle class and above populations. In contrast, many essential workers have often been unable to comply with social distancing, being exposed to too many sick people in medical and long-term care settings, driving buses and delivery vehicles, or planting, harvesting, and distributing food. The incidence of infection and death has been much higher among these essential workers as demonstrated by a 2020 study at University of California at Merced (Nuttle, 2021).

Most homeless individuals have lacked the capability to comply with prevention protocols. Fearing that the pandemic would sweep through encampments and crowded shelters, many local governments have taken over community centers and convention centers to create socially-distanced indoor shelters for the homeless. Yet many homeless people have refused to live indoors, and shelter use has never been made compulsory. Clean-ups of camps have mostly stopped in the U.S., and sanitation and trash removal are being provided to the remaining outdoors homeless encampments. The incidence of COVID-19 among the housed and unhoused homeless population remains surprisingly low (Mosites et al., 2020).

Is “clear policy communication” the best strategy – such as led Ghana through the crisis (Boasiako & Nyarko, in this issue)? Does a history of individualism cause disease management failure, or does community solidarity make the difference, sometimes created by a social history as in Japan (Aoki, in this issue) or common threat/enemy as in Iran (Farazmand & Daneefard, in this issue)? Western nations have a history of individualism, distrust of strong central governments (tyranny), economically driven policies, rational decision-making based on commonly accepted norms. The Japanese, Iranian and California cases in this special issue of IJPA are only three of many that exhibit similarities in governments’ responses – strong leadership, early lockdowns and appeals to community solidarity – that have resulted in high levels of compliance with masks, distancing and hand washing. All of the articles in this issue support testing and vaccine administration.

Because of lack of knowledge and consensus about the disease and its prevention and treatment, there has not been common agreement across nations/states on response strategies as they have faced the disease. The primacy of self (socializing vs. economic priorities) has left many crowded cities and rural villages in ebbing and flowing incidences of COVID-19. Data collection, analysis and sharing will take years to adequately fill the metrics. Only when solid verifiable numbers are available will researchers be able to state with assurance which factors and response strategies have contributed to the best outcomes against COVID-19.

Articles included in this issue

At the time that this special issue is being assembled, the Coronavirus pandemic is far from eradicated or even contained in most countries. Its physical, emotional, and economic devastation continues. New variants are spreading in many parts of the world, in most cases more quickly than the distribution of vaccinations. Therefore, this special issue cannot offer final conclusions, only interim findings and interpretations. We believe you will find the articles selected for inclusion fascinating and informative, but we will know much more about the virus, the efficacy of treatments, and the effectiveness of governments’ responses a year or two from now. It will be interesting to look back at these articles, and perhaps to learn how little we know at this point in time.

The articles in this Special Issue on Governments’ Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic are divided into two issues of The International Journal of Public Administration: #11 and #12. Both issues contain three types of articles: analytical studies, most of which are multi-site comparative analyses; framework articles that attempt to address underlying causes and factors that help in making sense of governments’ responses; and both single-site and multi-site case studies. The wide array of nations represented in these articles provides wonderful richness and demonstrates the wide-ranging effects of government structure and ideology, societal culture, and the economy of nations on responses to COVID-19. Each article’s focal nation or nations is noted in the title or in parentheses after the authors’ names below. Each article begins with an abstract that guides the reader to articles of greatest interest.

Obviously, the quality criteria used in selecting these different types of articles vary, but the variance does not indicate that there are different levels of academic quality among the types of articles. Case studies have rigorous quality criteria, but they differ from the quality criteria used with quantitative analytical articles.

Issue #11 includes

One framework article:

• “Digital Pandemic Response Systems: A Strategic Management Framework Against COVID-19,” by Bernd Wirtz, Wilheim M. Muller and Jen C. Weyeces (not nation-specific).

Five analytical articles:

• “Stay-At-Home Request or Order? A Study of the Regulation of Individual Behavior During a Pandemic Crisis in Japan,” by Naomi Aoki,

• “Governmental Social Media Communication Strategies during the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Case of Egypt,” by Laila El Baradei, Mohamed Kadry and Ghadeer Ahmed,

• “State Capacity in Responding to COVID-19,” by Balzhan Serikbayeva, Kanat Abdulla, and Yessengali Oskenbayev (multi-country),

• “Iranian Government’s Responses to the Coronavirus Pandemic (COVID-19): An Empirical Analysis with Implications for Future Crisis Management,” by Ali Farazmand and Hasan Danaeefard, and

• “One Size Does Not Fit All: Schools’ Responses to the COVID-19 Crisis,” by Paolo Fedele, Silvia Iacuzzi, and Andrea Garlatti (Italy).

And two case studies set in the United States:

• “Sheltering the Homeless during COVID-19 in San Jose, California,” by Darius Brown and Frances Edwards (USA), and

• “Nursing Homes and COVID-19: One State’s Experience,” by Beverly A. Cigler (USA).

Issue #12 includes

Five analytical articles:

• “Trust in Government and Social Isolation During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evidence from Brazil,” by Clayton Silva,

• “Nonprofit Capacity to Manage Hurricane-Pandemic Threat: Local and National Perspectives on Resilience during COVID-19,” by Nicole S. Hutton, Steven W. Mumford, and John J. Kiefer (USA),

• “When State Political Culture Matters: An Assessment of the Resilience of the Intergovernmental Systems in Italy and Spain Coping with COVID-19,” by Mattia Casula and Serafin Pazos-Vidal,

• “Responding to the Needs of the Homeless in the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Review of Adaptations in 20 Major U.S. Cities,” by Hee Soun Jang, Lisa A. Dicke, Laura Keyes, Yu Shi and Jintak Kim (USA), and

• “Flunking COVID Out of Schools: A Systematic Review of Non-pharmaceutical Interventions to Minimize Novel Coronavirus-2 in Educational Settings,” by Wakana Ishihara, Kelli Sum, Jenny Lee and Dan Nathan-Roberts (not country-specific).

And three case studies:

• “Pandemic Priorities: The Impact of South Korea’s COVID-19 Policies on Vulnerable Populations,” by Eunbin Chung and Jaehee Yi,

• “Government Communication during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Ghana,” by Albert Antwi-Boasiako and Enoch Nyarko, and

• “Sailing Through Troubled Waters of Pandemic by ‘Sound Governance’ Boat: Lessons from Odisha, India,” by Santap Mishra.

Disclosure Statement

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