FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF GOVERNANCE AND POLITICS, WERE THERE ANY IMPLICATIONS TO THE DIFFERENT RESPONSES GIVEN TO THE FIGHT AGAINST COVID-19?

Responsible researcher: Eduarda Miller Figueiredo

Intervention Location: -

Sample Size: -

Sector: Health/Politics

Variable of Main Interest:-

Type of Intervention : Political responses to combat Covid-19

Methodology: Others

Countries have needed to implement a wide range of policy measures to combat Covid-19. The objective of this article was to demonstrate how a combination of institutional, psychological and strategic factors help explain the different political and governance choices that governments made during the pandemic.

1. Policy Problem

To deal with the pandemic caused by Covid-19, countries needed to implement a wide range of policy measures, which include public health measures and fiscal measures to combat the economic costs of the pandemic (Capano et al., 2020). This fight involved the action of several government bodies, at different levels, bringing to light the central role that the government plays in many areas, especially from the point of view of public health governance.

To explain variations in responses across governmental jurisdictions it is necessary, in your analysis, to look at political interventions or governance arrangements – or both. In which the application of political science theories and concepts focuses attention on a variety of institutional, psychological, and strategic choices made by decision makers (Howlett, Ramesh, and Perl, 2020). And further, that insights from governance thinking can help explain the importance of these institutional factors, while political theory helps reveal the significant impact of psychological and strategic thinking on decision making.

Given this, the article seeks to demonstrate how this combination of institutional, psychological and strategic factors, which operate in the policy and governance arenas, help to better explain the policy and governance choices that different governments made during the pandemic that has ravaged the world in recent years. .

2. Implementation and Evaluation Context

In the state-centered governance model, governance gives the government a central policy-making role and highlights the importance of various types of institutional factors for how this is done (Fukuyama, 2013) [1] . And, when looking at the fight against Covid-19, there is even greater emphasis on the need to examine government responses to the pandemic through this more state-centered governance lens, bringing to light the institutional factors that affected government responses. to coronavirus (Capango, 2011).

However, by using the lens of society-centered governance, scholars in the field can examine questions such as:

1. Was there a national/state/city pandemic strategy and, if so, did the government follow it closely during the Covid-19 outbreak with regards to decision-making structures and operational management procedures?
2. Which non-state actors participated in the Covid-19 response and in what ways?
3. How limited was the social group or other non-state actor in facing the crisis?
4. How often, if at all, did the government request parliamentary approval before extending or intensifying emergency laws?
5. What mechanisms have enabled the government to maintain close dialogue with experts and relevant non-governmental organizations on effective measures to contain the spread of the coronavirus and mitigate its non-health outcomes?

However, such an approach misses many of the key dimensions of government responses to the crisis that appear most clearly when a state-centered approach is adopted. In other words, in all countries, the general stance adopted in response to the pandemic was one of centralization of power (Capano et al., 2020). Therefore, the state-centric approach addresses key questions in evaluating state responses to Covid-19 at the national level – such as the extent to which elected officials at different levels of government have solicited doctors, scientists and public health experts for a policy response. informed?

3. Policy/Program Details

The literature surrounding Covid-19 suggests that policy executives have replaced emergency management experts in command of the fight against coronavirus (Capano et al., 2020) and central governments, through legislation, have imposed a combination of policy measures to reduce the spread of the disease.

Policy measures varied between countries and also within countries. For example, Italy, France and Spain closed practically the entire city ( lockdown ), but in the United Kingdom the closure occurred after a while. In Germany schools were closed, while in Sweden schools for young children remained open.

Therefore, it was based on secondary sources on policy and governance responses to Covid-19 and media interviews with Prime Ministers and Ministers that the authors analyzed the divergent policy responses to the fight against the virus.

4. Method

Through the analysis it was possible to see that institutional, psychological and strategic factors help explain the choice of different policies and governance that governments took in combat.

In which institutional factors concern the way in which state and social actors are organized and interact in the formulation of policies. This includes the level of effectiveness of the government, its degree of freedom to manage, levels of social trust, the existence of health ministries and separate health ministers with medical training, the extent to which the parties in power are well established, the real power of governors before the federal government and the legacy of existing social policies and universal social programs. Psychological factors include elite panic and limited government attention span. And finally, strategic factors include political considerations underlying policy and governance choices when elected politicians face profound uncertainty.

• Main Results

European countries have demonstrated a variety of national policy responses to the pandemic. In which Romania, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic introduced measures quite quickly, while the Netherlands, Germany and France acted slowly (Toshkov, Yesilkagit and Carroll, 2020).

And, through multivariate regression and survival analysis, Toshkov, Yesilkagit and Carroll (2020) realized that more centralized countries, characterized by less government effectiveness, freedom and social trust, acted more quickly and decisively. However, societies with greater interpersonal trust, trust in government, and general freedom reacted more slowly to the spread of the pandemic.

To explain the variation in responses from Argentina and Brazil, Giraudy, NIedzwiecki and Pribble (2020) suggest: (i) to what extent the president's party is well established; (ii) the real power of governors in relation to the federal government; and (iii) the legacy of existing social policy and universal social programs.

The psychological factor – elite panic – had consequences regarding governance, as some decision makers realized that this elite panic had taken root at the highest levels. In which the Prime Minister of Israel consented to all the measures indicated by the Ministry of Health, while the Minister of Finance stated that, as a result, the economy was sacrificed given the chaotic and exaggerated decision in relation to the pandemic, according to what was stated by the Minister of Finance.

For the authors, the Israeli case provides a classic example of extreme uncertainty during the fight against Covid-19, with implications regarding the strategic dimension of policy formulation and governance in the face of the crisis. Where, on the governance side, such strict measures employed to contain the spread of the coronavirus, allowed the Prime Minister to adopt disorganized, uncoordinated, unregulated and uninformed modes of governance to obtain political gains (Maor, 2020).

6. Public Policy Lessons

The article, by discussing the combination of governance and political theory, contributes to understanding the political dynamics of Covid-19. Demonstrating that, for governance to contribute to the understanding of political practice, it must operate at the level of causal analysis.

References

MAOR, Moshe; HOWLETT, Michael. Explaining variations in state COVID-19 responses: Psychological, institutional, and strategic factors in governance and public policy-making. Policy Design and Practice , vol. 3, no. 3, p. 228-241, 2020.

[1] Governance is defined as “the ability of a government to make and enforce rules and provide services, regardless of whether that government is democratic or not” (Fukuyama, 2013).