Understanding policy responses to COVID-19: the stars haven’t fallen from the sky for scholars of public policy

ABSTRACT

Responses to COVID-19 across the globe are immensely varied and often perplexing. Policy levers, from mask wearing and social distancing to lockdowns and school closures, have been adopted and avoided with equal conviction by decisions makers who believe their measures are appropriate. In some contexts, the global pandemic has been treated with due seriousness by governments and political leaders while in others it has been downplayed to such an extent that it has been framed as a hoax. Every response to the pandemic has produced seemingly zero-sum debates and disputes over the veracity of knowledge bases, while uncertainty reigns as one of the few constants in decision making arenas. While it may be tempting to gravitate to the view that this unimaginable crisis is beyond the capacity of policy scholars to understand, this introductory article sets the scene for dispelling such a notion. It highlights how a number of core policy issues and perspectives, including the politics of problem framing, the limits of an evidence-based approach, and the nature of the public sector, can help bring analytical insights to this unprecedented crisis.

KEYWORDS:

• Coronavirus
• public policy
• policy sciences
• crisis management
• COVID-19 responses

Introduction

This special issue of the Journal of European Public Policy brings into sharp relief a phenomenon that we could scarcely have imagined in 2019. The world is in the grip of what Keane (2020) calls the ‘Great Pestilence’. At the time of writing in late May 2021, the virus has COVID-19 has infected almost 170 million globally and killed over 3.5 million (JHCRC, 2020). Across the globe, billions are being encouraged or required to wear masks, social distance and forego normal inter-personal relations. Throughout Europe and the world – as they are experiencing first, second and third waves – millions are unable to work because huge sectors of market economies been shut down and operating at barely sustainable levels (Berry, 2020). Meanwhile governments have incurred massive debts as they seek to keep economies afloat and maintain social order by bailing out businesses, increasing welfare benefits, paying or supplementing wage and salaries and acting in effect as surrogate employers. The objective impact of COVID-19, combined with the social-psychological trauma of the pandemic, have delivered effects that have previously been reserved for dystopian disaster movies (Boin et al., 2021)

For all the successes that some governments and societies have experienced, particularly during the first 12 months until circa March 2021 (such as New Zealand, South Korea and Taiwan), we are witnessing political responses that are disturbing and puzzling to many. Some governments and political leaders have at times either been in denial that COVID is a significant issue, such as UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson who was recorded shaking hands with hospital patients, or Mexican President Obrador who rejected the idea that its effects were severe and held public rallies to encourage citizen to live their lives ‘normally’. Some even declared it a hoax (Trump in the US, Bolsonaro in Brazil), while others have opened up economies while a first wave was still in progress, only to see the rapid onset of second waves (UK, Spain, France, Poland, Czech Republic, Israel). Furthermore, some scientific experts have been vilified as undermining political processes and being detached from the lives and liberties of individual citizens. This was evident particularly in the US with Donald Trump’s persistent attack on experts in the Center for Disease Control and the World Health Organisation, but also in Germany with ‘populist’ media criticism of Christian Drosten, one of the country’s foremost coronavirus experts. In tandem, public sector responses, including healthcare systems, have often been chaotic and struggled to cope (Italy, Spain, New York). To add to the incredulity of many, there has been an almost bewildering array of responses to a common threat (Capano et al., 2020). They range from responses inclined towards the principles of ‘herd immunity’ (Sweden, the UK in the early stages of the virus) to ‘virus elimination’ (New Zealand, South Korea) and from ‘top down’ responses such as New Zealand, Hong Kong and China, to more diverse ‘bottom up’ approaches (often for different reasons) such as those experienced in the US, Italy, the Netherlands and Switzerland. In the face of threats from the virus, and from within public institutions struggling to cope, there have been pockets of resistance and demonstrations (and sometimes death threats), from anti-maskers, anti-vaxxers, conspiracy theorists and others who see their liberties being undermined by ‘Big Brother’ governments initiating punishing forms of restrictions (Forsyth, 2020). Finally, the virus has impacted much more severely on lower socio-economic groups, minority communities, women and the elderly (Blundell et al., 2020; Farre et al., 2020).

How can we explain what’s going on here? Some such as Topper and Lagadec (2013, p. 8) arguing in their examination of mega-crises, that they ‘will remain, a wild and maverick reality, impossible to understand and grasp within frameworks shaped, built and stamped to contain stable and repeated phenomena’. Yet we argue here, and it is demonstrated in the contributions to this special issue, that the stars have not fallen from the sky. Indeed, not only are they still there, but the tools to understand COVID responses that have bewildered so many, have existed for some time in our discipline and can actually be traced back to the post-war ‘rationalism’ of Lasswell (1956, 1971) through to more contemporary studies of policy (Weible et al., 2020) and crisis management (Boin & Lodge, 2016; Boin et al., 2021; Moynihan, 2012). Many facets of COVID responses may be unthinkable and alien to what we might hope for in the face of a global pandemic, but ultimately, they should not be so surprising (even although normatively we may be shocked). Understanding policy responses to COVID involves the discipline building on what it has understood for years. Here we map out six key issues.

Problem framing has always been a political issue: COVID is no exception

Governments have varied considerably in framing COVID as a policy problem – even in the face of strong data and clear trends, from a range of sources such as the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Research Center and the World Health Organisation. For example, in framing the scale and severity of the challenge in the early stages of March-May 2020, some such as Angela Merkel described it as the biggest national challenge since the second world war, and Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin described the virus as exceptionally serious for health, well-being and the Finnish economy. Meanwhile, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson indicated initially that he didn’t want the UK to follow the ‘panic’ measures being introduced across Europe, and US President Donald Trump described it as ‘just like the flu’, and a ‘hoax’. Such diversity is the product of more than mere crisis pragmatism. It is also underpinned by political ideology, and perceptions of the legitimacy (or not) of state ‘interference’ and regulation of markets, as well as citizens’ individual freedoms.

Problem definition, therefore, narrowing down a social phenomenon to a ‘problem’ with explicit or implicit assumptions about how big, bad, small or meagre, is a language tool of politics. We do not need to go far to realise that problem definition and problem framing are critical issues at the heart of policy studies (Peters, 2019), from studies of agenda setting and agenda biases in the 1970s (Bachrach & Baratz, 1970; Cobb & Elder, 1971) to framing conceived as an issue of power, whether it be political policy/elites, advocacy coalitions of interest, or policy monopolies, seeking to insulate reputations, agendas and governing ideologies from forces that may derail them (see Cairney, 2020 for an overview). Scholars of crisis management (e.g., see Boin et al., 2017; Brändström & Kuipers, 2003), also know that societies do not suspend ‘politics’ in times of crisis. While there may be calls to ‘rally round’ in the face of serious national threats, it is commonplace to see framing being used as a key feature of crisis denial, exploitation, critique and blame games in a context in which political survival and ideological leanings are being challenged (Boin et al., 2009; Drennan et al., 2015; Moynihan, 2012). Framing COVID as a minor issue or even a hoax may be viewed as appalling behaviour for those of us who hope that public interest politics will prevail at a time when the world faces arguably the biggest existential threat in living memory, but it should not be a surprise. Furthermore, framing COVID as a health issue, or an economic issue, or a social issue (accompanied by discussions of tensions, trade-offs and ‘what matters most’), permeates discourse around evaluating how well (or badly) governments have done and what should be the most appropriate course of action. The existence of a multiplicity of COVID framings, therefore, is not an aberration. It is a continuation of ‘normal’ policy/politics – phenomena that have been studied for years.

Governments have always had a loose relationship with experts and evidence: COVID is nothing new

The roles of experts and evidence have been critical and often controversial in how governments have responded to COVID. Notwithstanding public critique of ‘the science’ and individual scientists, there has been substantial media and citizen frustration about how little is known about the virus and its impact, as well as about a lack of consensus on how to manage both. Such idealism, however, contrasts with the practical reality that knowledge about the virus itself has been partial and accumulated incrementally in real time (Brinks & Ibert, 2020; Weible et al., 2020; Wolkewitz & Puljak, 2020). It is based inter alia on estimates of reproduction rates, and capacity to infect different populations by age, race, gender and underlying health conditions. Research also seeks to explain the highly unusual variations in symptoms for infected individuals. Some are asymptomatic or have mild symptoms, while others suffer and die from multi-system pathologies of the heart, lungs, brain and other major organs. Multiple disciplinary specialists have been involved in such research, including specialists in virology, epidemiology, immunology and public health. Furthermore, transmission is a social issue, and measures to address it via mask wearing, social distancing, lockdowns, and contact tracing technology, require input from a range of experts in public health, behavioural science, law, economics, business supply-chains, as well as from public relations consultants and opinion pollsters. The partial, provisional and fragmentation of research evidence has also been heightened by disagreements over the independence (or not) of experts from government. This tension played out particularly in the early stages of COVID in the UK, where former Chief Scientific Advisor Professor David King established an expert committee as a counter-forum to the government’s official SAGE committee whose membership was hidden from public view and whose publicly-facing independent experts were akin to a public relations arm of government, compromising their independence (Horton, 2020).

Frustrating as such disagreement and evidence ‘shortfalls’ may be for many, they are nothing new. The gap between the rhetoric of evidence idealism and evidence in practice, has its origins in debates around Lasswell (1951) and his call for a ‘policy sciences of democracy’, but is manifest particularly in critiques of ‘evidence-based policy making’ (Botterill, 2017; Parsons, 2002). Experts can disagree, and evidence often points in different directions and contains gaps, tensions and qualification (Cairney, 2016; Parkurst, 2020). Policy makers also are typically selective about which experts they consult and which evidence they use. Indeed some such as Head (2008) argue that ‘scientific’ expertise is one of only three forms of evidence informing decision making, the others being bureaucratic/administrative (such as availability of funds, technology, communication channels and appropriately trained staff) and political (such as likelihood of party and citizen acceptance). Added to the mix, the diversity, ambiguity and limits of evidence, fit squarely with long-standing academic work on the nature of the phenomena of crisis, which by its nature, does not provide us with complete, and uniform evidence about the nature of the threat and how to address it (Boin et al., 2017). Whether we are examining the role of evidence in ‘normal’ or ‘crisis’ times, governments routinely claiming to ‘follow the science’ (or criticising it), are actually engaging in a long-understood, complex relationship with experts and expertise. Moreover, crisis scholars have known for some time that no matter how reliable our knowledge of uncertainties becomes or how professional our politicians become at explaining threats, citizens always feel a sense of unease around the uncertainties that crises presents. This is simply what it means to live in a ‘risk society’ (Beck, 1992).

Public sectors aren’t built to handle pandemics

In 2020, critics and defenders of public sector institutions were vociferous. Some hospitals, health care systems and public sectors generally, struggled to cope with COVID and its cascading effects across the health, economic, social and political spheres. We might have expected a lot more from taxpayer-funded institutions meant to serve the public interest, especially when public sector pandemic planning has become more sophisticated in the wake of Sudden Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), the H1N1 pandemic, Ebola and Swine Flu (Monto & Fukuda, 2020).

Again, we should not be too surprised. For many years, scholars have studied the ebbs and flows of public sectors and public sector reform. From traditional public administration and corporate management to new public management and whole-of-government/joined up government approaches, there has been a continual focus on the strengths and limits of public sectors (Christensen & Lægreid, 2016; Van de Walle & Groeneveld, 2017). Their core role is of course the delivery of a range of public services and goods that (depending on the specific political and administrative context) can include health, housing, education, policing, transport and social work. In performing such roles, they have been lauded as saviours in the face of market failure and delivers of ‘public value’ (Benington & Moore, 2011) but also criticised as bloated and bureaucratic (Prendergast, 2003).

In addition to such controversies we have also known that the role of planning for crises, disasters and contingencies was for many years perceived as an ancillary ‘add on’ to the core functions of a public sector (Boin et al., 2017). Although varying from country to country, such planning has generally been shaped by the broader political context. Until the 1980s, contingency planning – at least in the ‘west’ – was shaped by the cold war, often to the extent that planning for a nuclear strike and civil disturbances were often expect to ‘double up’ and act as plans for other contingencies such as disease outbreaks (Alexander, 2002; Davis, 2007). From the 1980s onwards, with a litany of disasters etched in the public mind (Chernobyl, Bhopal, SARS and particularly 9/11), contingency planning became more of a process in its own right, with public sectors developing risk management standards and procedures, crisis scenario plans and training (Drennan et al., 2015). At the extreme, some have argued that contemporary contingency plans are little more than ‘fantasy documents’ (Clarke, 1999) that are better at delivering political legitimacy, demonstrating foresight and providing symbolic forms of reassurance than preparing public sectors to respond when the ‘unthinkable’ happens. A more generous but likely more realistic take is that these modern trends, supported particularly post-9/11 by increases in resources given to contingency planners, have upgraded public sector crisis management capacities (Lægreid & Rykkja, 2019). However, they have not alleviated persistent problems in the crisis management landscape, including administrative/bureaucratic politics hampering responses, interventions that backfire, and political messaging being out of tune with the experiences of citizens and affected groups (Boin et al., 2017). We also know that pandemic plans, the essential starting points for most COVID responses, require high levels of adaptation and improvisation to be effective (Lloyd-Smith, 2020). Indeed, it well recognised that high levels of improvisation are inevitable and essential in the face of so-called transboundary crises, which travel across jurisdictional borders and cascade across policy sectors (Boin & Lodge, 2016).

Thus, for public sectors, the logistical challenges of COVID are huge, because they are operating under deep, complex, and time sensitive conditions which are well beyond their routine ways of working. Moreover, when we factor in the long running issues we identify above, it is not particularly surprising that they are struggling to cope.

One-size-fits-all responses to COVID were never going to happen

A persistent feature of COVID responses, sometimes to the dismay of commentators who seek widespread, and like-minded solutions to a common threat, is that different countries (and indeed different sub-national jurisdictions within countries) respond in different ways (Capano et al., 2020). There is huge variation in the policy on issues such as social distancing, mask wearing, contact tracing, quarantine lockdown, travel restrictions, welfare support packages and more. For example Sweden leaned heavily towards a ‘herd immunity approach’, the UK toyed with the idea in the early stages, while others such as Ireland, France and Germany adopted a suppression strategy and New Zealand stood alone with its ‘gold standard’ elimination strategy (Mazey & Richardson, 2020). The variations in responses are endless, but it is certainly a key feature of COVID discourse, from media, citizens and numerous lobby groups and think tanks, that governments should learn in rapid time from what has worked (and hasn’t worked) in other countries.

Despite critique and surprise at such variations, at the centre of political science and comparative politics/policy for years, has been the study of national, sub-national and policy systems and sub-systems. This phenomenon runs through (at least) new institutionalism, patterns of democracy the architecture of public administrations (from unitary to federal systems), and policy styles, as well as debates about structure and agency, particularly on the roles, capacities and powers of individual political leaders, based on gender, personality type, and preference for different types of advisory systems. Crisis and disaster scholars have also long-recognised patterns in the flow of power during crises (t Hart et al., 1993; Tselios & Tompkins, 2017). It is manifest at times in varying combinations of centralisation at the apex of political and administrative systems, at other times decentralised in sub-national and local departments and agencies, and at other times scattered horizontally across a multitude of public, private, corporate and semi-corporate bodies. Variance is the norm and we should not expect a major transboundary crisis to depart from established patterns.

Such responses may be functional (particularly based on the logic of decentralisation as the best response forums for local responses) or dysfunctional (such as lack of coordination) but diversity of response patterns is inevitable and often essential to address threats as they are manifested and perceived in different jurisdictions (see for example Hillyard, 2000; Kettl, 2004). Again, therefore, as policy scholars we should not be taken aback by the enormous differences in cross-national and domestic responses.

Pluralism doesn’t disappear because there’s a pandemic

A feature of responses to COVID-19 includes political protests from anti-maskers, a promulgation of conspiracy theories around the virus, legal challenges to lockdowns and businesses defying orders to close down (Forsyth, 2020). Leaving aside our normative views on whether such matters are desirable, they have certainly been shocking to many. For some, it is anathema that individuals would refuse to wear masks, conceive of COVID as a hoax and even agitate against those who follow public guidelines. For others, individual liberties and livelihoods are being eroded and undermined.

Once again, however, as policy scholars we should not be caught off guard when we see pluralism in a crisis and the legal and political challenges. Political science has studied ‘rally round effects’, where the assumption is that in in extraordinary and threatening times (e.g., crises), parties and citizens should ‘rally round’ and set aside their own personal interests and critiques of government for the greater good (Chowanietz, 2011; Hindmoor & McConnell, 2015). There is also some similarity here with so-called ‘valence’ issues, such as anti-corruption and care for the elderly, around which voters typically share a consensuson the objectives of public policy. In this regard COVID-19 has certainly produced quite remarkable degrees of consensus (at times). Political psychologists (Jetten et al., 2020) in their examination of the UK, for example, argue that by and large, COVID has produced the biggest every behaviour change in society witnessed in modern times. Yet, such forms of consensus are not complete or universal in crises, as we have known for years. Rally round effects can be short-lived or reserved only for spectacular international crises such as 9/11 (Chowanietz, 2011; Murray, 2017), while valence issues are rarely universally agreed and views can change dramatically over time (such as public support for the UK being a member of the EU).

Overall, in societies based on separations of powers and degrees of political pluralism, countervailing forces to governments are to be expected. Crisis scholars have long recognised this phenomenon and have examined it, for example, in studies of the community/civil backlash against the US response to Hurricane Katrina and the UK government’s response to foot and mouth disease. Once again, therefore, as policy scholars and political scientists we should expect diverse and diverging arguments, coupled with political action. COVID has produced political forces and counter forces, the seeds of which are well understood deep-rooted in liberal democratic societies.

Social inequality and vulnerability have always mattered in a crisis

In terms of epidemiology, the coronavirus and the ensuing disease of COVID-19 are non-discriminatory. They have the capacity to infect, damage and even lead to death in those affected, regardless of class, race, gender or age. Yet as our understanding of the virus and the disease emerged over time, we have become aware through multiple studies that in fact, those from poor socio-economics backgrounds, and minority communities are more liable to contract the disease and more liable to suffer chronic conditions and even die. In the US, the black population is 2.5 times more likely to die from COVID than the white population (www.covidtracking.com). A study in the UK by Blundell et al. (2020) indicated that existing inequalities around divides on income, age, ethnicity and gender have been heightened by COVID, including key health workers having higher exposure to risks and loss of earnings for those on low wages. Response measures can also affect citizens unequally. In Spain, one study of lockdown measures indicated that outcomes had a negative impact on lower paid, under-educated workers, and in particular women who bore the brunt of increases in childcare and housework responsibilities (Farre et al., 2020). There are many reasons why such vulnerabilities are evident. They include the extent to which vulnerable groups have access to public health care systems, can afford health insurance, need to work in manual and service roles that cannot be undertaken from home, and don’t have cars and therefore must rely on public transport.

Policy scholars have studied for years, the gap between the language of ‘equal opportunities’ and the realities of lower socio-economic groups and disadvantaged communities in a variety of policy contexts, including, inter alia, education, housing and labour market access (Machenbach et al., 2008; Nazroo, 2003). Moreover, aside from these specific analyses of inequality in policy areas, the emergence of agenda setting studies was propelled by a perceived need to understand how the politics of policy were circumscribing calls for social justice in ways which were disadvantaging communities . Similarly scholars of crises and disasters, have known for many decades, that the outcomes of crises/disasters, are not necessarily determined by ‘triggers’ (the tsunami, heatwave or earthquake) but rather how those triggers interact with a variety of factors that make communities vulnerable. Typically, disaster scholars have thought about these forms of vulnerability through large-scale structures which translate into unsafe social conditions (see e.g., Fothergill & Peek, 2004; Wisner et al., 2004). Previously in Hurricane Katrina, for example, race and class had a major impact on the vulnerability of poor ethnic minorities across a range of issues from housing to employment support (Elliot and Pais, 2006). Conversely, studies of community resilience during crises now show the opposite. Namely, that communities can have the capacity to respond to crises if, for example, they enjoy certain characteristics, such as high levels of social capital (Aldrich, 2011)

Many of us may be appalled that vulnerable groups and communities bear the brunt of COVID but we should not be surprised that what some describe as a ‘great leveller’ is not quite so levelling after all. Social inequality and people’s vulnerability have always mattered in shaping crisis outcomes.

Contents of the special issue

It is in this context that we come to the articles in this special issue. Much as it may be tempting to think that the ‘stars have fallen from the sky’ for public policy scholars because the COVID landscape is so shocking and unfathomable, the metaphorical stars are still there and capable of being examined by policy scholars, using the concepts, frameworks and theories we have been examining, promoting and critiquing for years, while adapting them to the specific challenges of understanding policy responses to the coronavirus and COVID-19. Clearly, this Special Issue can clearly only address some aspects of governmental responses, but in each paper, we find the author or authors, drawing on long-standing intellectual policy frameworks and rich analytical tools.

Arjen Boin and Martin Lodge deploy a crisis management lens to examine the response in four countries: the UK, Germany, Netherlands and Sweden. They tackle a key issue at the heart of the response: the tension between ‘values’ (following principles and doing what is ‘right’) and responding pragmatically to high levels of uncertainty with little time to act. They argue that the distinction between the two is blurred and more nuanced than we might think. Time will tell what has worked/what hasn’t but they recognise the value of pragmatism and that ‘perfection is the enemy of the good’.

Georgina Waylen draws on literature on gendered leadership and feminist institutionalism. The article focuses on hypermasculine styles that are high on rhetoric and risk-taking but low on reflection and empathy – contributing to failures characterised inter alia by false promises, poor communication unnecessary delays. While the case study focuses on UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s particular form of ‘English elite white masculinity’, it has broader applicability in its argument that we ignore the pathologies of gendered leadership issues at our peril.

Will Jennings, Gerry Stoker, Viktor Valgarðsson, Daniel Devine and Jennifer Gaskell address the long-standing issue of ‘trust’. In context of the pandemic we now realise just how vital it is for an effective response, partly in terms of public perceptions of the level of threat from the virus, and partly because governments rely on citizens foregoing multiple freedoms in order to facilitate an effective response. Focusing on the early stages of the virus and examining data in Australia, Italy, the UK and the USA, the authors dissect trust into trust, mistrust and distrust. Among their many findings and analyses, is the argument that healthy democracies and healthy crisis responses actually require, to some degree, sceptical and mistrusting citizens.

A focus of Italy, an epicentre of the virus, particularly in the early period of 2020, comes from Giliberto Capano and Andrea Lippi. They examine three regions and differences in decentralised arrangements and policy capacities that have helped produce varying degree of effectiveness. One of the lessons of the analysis, and a reminder to scholars of public administration and public policy, is that the pre-crisis architecture and arrangements of policy and political systems, matter immensely in shaping crisis responses – particularly when the ‘centre’ is found wanting.

Michael Mintrom, Maria Rublee, Matteo Bonotti, and Steven Zech address an issue that has been the focus of much policy analysis over the last few decades i.e., the role of policy narratives. In the case of the virus and COVID-19, the authors examine both Germany and the UK, and address in particular the role of localisation (where narratives resonate with existing idea, norms and culture) and public justification (where narratives bolster response legitimacy). The narratives of Angela Merkel and Boris Johnson were very different – the former appealed to a collective need to focus on science and ‘rationality’, while the latter was imbued with the language of sectarianism, war and battles. Words matter both in aiding and undermining responses to COVID.

Given the importance of narratives in understanding public policies and their impact, a complementary article by Amrita Narlikar and Cecelia Sottilota addresses framing (a) economic costs vs. human costs and (b) the disease affecting sub-groups of society vs. all groups. It examines 15 responses from Western European Governments and provides detailed case studies of Sweden and Greece. Among the many findings are that narratives emphasising economic fallout and the disease affecting smaller sub-groups of society, produced less stringent measures. Narratives, at the ‘softer’ end of crisis responses (compared to ‘harder’ tools such as lockdowns, quarantine and restrictions on businesses trading) can nevertheless be highly influential in shaping crisis responses.

John Boswell, Jack Corbett, Heidi Salomonsen and Rod Rhodes examine ‘top down’ aspects of responses to COVID, particularly in terms of the dynamics of ‘court politics’ of political elites in the UK and Denmark. The authors’ examine of how leadership networks and inner circles in complex formal and informal arenas manifest across a range of different crisis management challenges and over time. While much of their analysis is exploratory, it does highly the value of unfolding court politics to help explain responses to success/failure and via credit claiming and blame games.

Sharing some common ground, the article by Rahel Schomaker, Marko Hack and Ann-Katrin Mandry focuses on the crisis management challenges faced by the European Union in managing COVID. In particular it addresses classic crisis challenges via the relationships between a top-down/centralised response and more ground up/decentralised one, while adding extra layers of analysis in terms of the roles for formal and informal arenas. In findings not inconsistent with many decades of crisis research, there are tensions between all these (played out here in an EU/nation state dynamic), but with the unpredictably of crisis exposing the limits of formal EU procedures and tools.

A shift in focus comes with the article by Timon Forster and Mirko Heinzel which examines responses in 163 countries, focusing on the differential educational backgrounds of leaders and differential reliance on scientific evidence. They found initial and speedier responses in leaders with a PhD and who relied on science, and slower responses among leaders with graduate degrees, although this distinction subsequently became less significant because of herding. While the authors are cautions about attributing causality, the analysis adds a further dimension of ‘technocratic mentality’ and its role in shaping responses to COVID – particularly because it can highly a tension between technocratic responses and public deliberation (or its absence).

The final article by Erik Baekkeskov, Olivier Rubin, and PerOla Öberg picks up on this issue by tackling an issue at the very heart of liberal-democracies in their response to COVID i.e., the pursuit of polices based on pluralistic democratic legitimacy where a range of options are discussed, or the pursuit and serial justification of more monotonistic polices and narratives. Cutting across both can be the role of experts and expertise. Case studies of Denmark and Sweden, two countries that would otherwise by favourable contexts for pluralistic discourse, departed from such ‘ideals’. The authors find that both were dominated by monotonous ‘reason-giving’ narratives, with Sweden’s leading voices being those of health experts, and Denmark’s being that of elected leaders. This analysis fits with long-standing scholarship in crisis management (e.g., Boin et al., 2017). Crisis management involves not only managing the on-the-ground threat, in this case the virus and its transmission, but also the politics around it, including citizen fears and pleas for multiple voices to be heard. Often, especially in the early stages of crisis, there are appeals to ‘rally around’ policies and crisis leaders while they face threatening circumstances under conditions of high uncertainty and little time to act.

Overall, it is clear, and not untypical of crisis responses more generally, that variations in responses to the coronavirus and disease COVID-19, as well as the extent of their effectiveness (and/or otherwise) can plausibly be explained by drawing on many of the phenomena that policy scholars have studied for years. These include political values, gender, trust, policy capacity, narratives, executive politics, central/local tension, and one voice vs. many voices. Many of the studies here have also drawn on prior analyses of the politics of crisis management: from the uncertainties and ambiguities of threats, to varieties of interpretative possibilities and complex response patterns. As this special issue has shown, policy responses to COVID-19 are intensely political and rooted in the types of phenomena that permeate the daily work of policy researchers and teachers world-wide.

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Additional information

Notes on contributors

Allan McConnell

Allan McConnell is Professor Emeritus, Department of Government and International Relations, University of Sydney. He has published widely on public policy issues such as policy success/failure, hidden agendas, wicked problems, placebo policies and COVID governance.

Alastair Stark

Alastair Stark is Senior Lecturer in the School of Political Science and International Studies, University of Queensland. His expertise and publications include crisis management, institutionalization and participatory modes of governance, institutional amnesia, post-crisis inquiries and lesson-learning.