This paper offers an analysis of the theoretical and empirical challenges the coronavirus pandemic poses for theories of policy change. Critical events like coronavirus disease are potentially powerful destabilizers that can trigger discontinuity in policy trajectories and thus are an opportunity for accentuating path shifts. In this paper, we argue that three dynamic pathways of change are possible and must be considered when analysing post-COVID policymaking: normalization, adaptation, and acceleration. These different pathways need to be explored in order to understand the mid- and long-term policy effects of the pandemic. This introduction contextualizes the articles in this special issue, situating them broadly within two broad categories: (a) assessment of how the coronavirus disease pandemic should be understood as a crisis event, and its role in relationship to mechanisms of policy change; and (b) mapping the future contours of the pandemic’s impact on substantive policy areas, including education, health care, public finance, social protection, population ageing, the future of work, and violence against women.
{"title":"Long-term policy impacts of the coronavirus: normalization, adaptation, and acceleration in the post-COVID state","authors":"G. Capano, Michael Howlett, D. Jarvis, M. Ramesh","doi":"10.1093/polsoc/puab018","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/polsoc/puab018","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This paper offers an analysis of the theoretical and empirical challenges the coronavirus pandemic poses for theories of policy change. Critical events like coronavirus disease are potentially powerful destabilizers that can trigger discontinuity in policy trajectories and thus are an opportunity for accentuating path shifts. In this paper, we argue that three dynamic pathways of change are possible and must be considered when analysing post-COVID policymaking: normalization, adaptation, and acceleration. These different pathways need to be explored in order to understand the mid- and long-term policy effects of the pandemic. This introduction contextualizes the articles in this special issue, situating them broadly within two broad categories: (a) assessment of how the coronavirus disease pandemic should be understood as a crisis event, and its role in relationship to mechanisms of policy change; and (b) mapping the future contours of the pandemic’s impact on substantive policy areas, including education, health care, public finance, social protection, population ageing, the future of work, and violence against women.","PeriodicalId":47383,"journal":{"name":"Policy and Society","volume":"75 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":9.3,"publicationDate":"2022-01-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85512358","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Education has been extremely affected by the coronavirus disease crisis, with almost all countries temporarily closing their schools in 2020. After the first stage of the pandemic, in which national governments focused on guaranteeing the academic year’s continuity, key international organizations emphasized the need to adopt structural policy reforms to face the challenges posed by the crisis. Based on international and European countries’ policy documents, this paper analyzes long-term responses articulated in the education sector. The analysis has allowed us to identify three preponderant areas of response: the digitalization of the educational system, educational inequalities, and teachers’ development. The agendas and policy instruments that international organizations have so far pushed for in relation to each of these areas do not differ substantially from the agendas and instruments they promoted in the pre-pandemic era. It is still early to assess the deepness of the transformations in course, but in most cases, prevailing responses represent the intensification of change processes initiated before the pandemic. Nonetheless, the type and intensity of country responses vary among the European Union member states. Although the pandemic represents a common thread, countries have experienced the crisis differently according to the characteristics of their educational systems and the main problems the crisis has revealed.
{"title":"Digitalization and beyond: the effects of Covid-19 on post-pandemic educational policy and delivery in Europe","authors":"Adrián Zancajo, Antoni Verger, P. Bolea","doi":"10.1093/polsoc/puab016","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/polsoc/puab016","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Education has been extremely affected by the coronavirus disease crisis, with almost all countries temporarily closing their schools in 2020. After the first stage of the pandemic, in which national governments focused on guaranteeing the academic year’s continuity, key international organizations emphasized the need to adopt structural policy reforms to face the challenges posed by the crisis. Based on international and European countries’ policy documents, this paper analyzes long-term responses articulated in the education sector. The analysis has allowed us to identify three preponderant areas of response: the digitalization of the educational system, educational inequalities, and teachers’ development. The agendas and policy instruments that international organizations have so far pushed for in relation to each of these areas do not differ substantially from the agendas and instruments they promoted in the pre-pandemic era. It is still early to assess the deepness of the transformations in course, but in most cases, prevailing responses represent the intensification of change processes initiated before the pandemic. Nonetheless, the type and intensity of country responses vary among the European Union member states. Although the pandemic represents a common thread, countries have experienced the crisis differently according to the characteristics of their educational systems and the main problems the crisis has revealed.","PeriodicalId":47383,"journal":{"name":"Policy and Society","volume":"10 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":9.3,"publicationDate":"2022-01-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73355029","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
COVID-19 has had a disproportionate impact on older people, in terms of their susceptibility to the disease and increased fatality rates, while also by creating barriers to health care access, social isolation, psychological and financial burdens. Policy responses provide an opportunity to understand whether the demands of this crisis have led to the development of policy innovations to meet the needs of aging populations. We analyzed an illustrative corpus of policies collected by HelpAge International across Asia in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Iran, Japan, Korea, Myanmar, Pakistan, and Vietnam. We identified different policy types that impacted older persons during the pandemic. We also observed the degree to which these policies support arguments for paradigmatic policy changes by examining different models of intersectoral and multisectoral collaborations, and the kinds of policies where these multiactor arrangements were the most common. From our analysis, we identify two main areas where COVID-19 policies are most likely to lead to more long-lasting innovation in Asia. The first is in the upgrading of infrastructures to ensure access to benefits, and to develop remote and doorstep banking. The second area is well-being and caring support, such as the development of programs to provide increased services to support home-based older persons, including telemedicine, delivery services for medical and other supplies, and remote support for older persons and their carers. These changes, while important, are consistent with “acceleration” models of policy change, where COVID-19 responses sped up, and scaled up, programs consistent with current institutional and organizational structures.
{"title":"COVID-19 as a trigger for innovation in policy action for older persons? Evidence from Asia","authors":"Stuart A. Gietel-Basten, K. Matus, R. Mori","doi":"10.1093/polsoc/puab012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/polsoc/puab012","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 COVID-19 has had a disproportionate impact on older people, in terms of their susceptibility to the disease and increased fatality rates, while also by creating barriers to health care access, social isolation, psychological and financial burdens. Policy responses provide an opportunity to understand whether the demands of this crisis have led to the development of policy innovations to meet the needs of aging populations. We analyzed an illustrative corpus of policies collected by HelpAge International across Asia in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Iran, Japan, Korea, Myanmar, Pakistan, and Vietnam. We identified different policy types that impacted older persons during the pandemic. We also observed the degree to which these policies support arguments for paradigmatic policy changes by examining different models of intersectoral and multisectoral collaborations, and the kinds of policies where these multiactor arrangements were the most common. From our analysis, we identify two main areas where COVID-19 policies are most likely to lead to more long-lasting innovation in Asia. The first is in the upgrading of infrastructures to ensure access to benefits, and to develop remote and doorstep banking. The second area is well-being and caring support, such as the development of programs to provide increased services to support home-based older persons, including telemedicine, delivery services for medical and other supplies, and remote support for older persons and their carers. These changes, while important, are consistent with “acceleration” models of policy change, where COVID-19 responses sped up, and scaled up, programs consistent with current institutional and organizational structures.","PeriodicalId":47383,"journal":{"name":"Policy and Society","volume":"1965 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":9.3,"publicationDate":"2022-01-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91318631","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The aim of this article is to explore the nature of policy change in the domain of public finance (fiscal policy) in the wake of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) pandemic as well as for a post-Covid era. It draws upon the literatures of path dependency and ideational change in public policy to consider three broad questions: (1) whether the pandemic really is a critical juncture for policy change; (2) whether the extant neoliberal austerity paradigm has faced lasting ideational displacement by Keynesianism; and (3) whether Covid-19 has really punctuated the existing fiscal policy equilibrium or rather served as a path-clearing accelerator of public finance trends that were already underway. The article then suggests three potential future trajectories: Keynesian, neoliberal, and mixed/other to consider how the path of policy change might materialize in the fiscal realm in the post-Covid era.
{"title":"The return of Keynesianism? Exploring path dependency and ideational change in post-covid fiscal policy","authors":"Usman W. Chohan","doi":"10.1093/polsoc/puab013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/polsoc/puab013","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The aim of this article is to explore the nature of policy change in the domain of public finance (fiscal policy) in the wake of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) pandemic as well as for a post-Covid era. It draws upon the literatures of path dependency and ideational change in public policy to consider three broad questions: (1) whether the pandemic really is a critical juncture for policy change; (2) whether the extant neoliberal austerity paradigm has faced lasting ideational displacement by Keynesianism; and (3) whether Covid-19 has really punctuated the existing fiscal policy equilibrium or rather served as a path-clearing accelerator of public finance trends that were already underway. The article then suggests three potential future trajectories: Keynesian, neoliberal, and mixed/other to consider how the path of policy change might materialize in the fiscal realm in the post-Covid era.","PeriodicalId":47383,"journal":{"name":"Policy and Society","volume":"35 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":9.3,"publicationDate":"2022-01-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81286410","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Policy windows emerge through alignment among specific policy problems, political forces, and proposed policy responses. During policy windows, it becomes possible for change to occur, driven by the agenda-setting of policy entrepreneurs. We consider how the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) created a significant policy window. As we do so, we seek to advance theorization of the conditions under which policy change occurs and when it sticks. We ground this discussion in exploration of a salient policy matter: responding to violence against women (VAW). Shortly after the World Health Organization declared the spread of COVID-19 a global pandemic, in April 2020, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuke, Executive Director of United Nations (UN) Women—the entity of the UN dedicated to gender equality and the empowerment of women—coined VAW the “shadow pandemic” and launched a global public awareness campaign. We review the advocacy work that led in 2020 to broader recognition of VAW as a significant policy problem. That advocacy has driven policy changes at local and national levels that are intended to have long-term, trajectory-altering impacts on reducing violence. We conclude by drawing insights to guide theory-driven empirical analysis of other policy windows.
{"title":"COVID-19 as a policy window: policy entrepreneurs responding to violence against women","authors":"Michael Mintrom, J. True","doi":"10.1093/polsoc/puab017","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/polsoc/puab017","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Policy windows emerge through alignment among specific policy problems, political forces, and proposed policy responses. During policy windows, it becomes possible for change to occur, driven by the agenda-setting of policy entrepreneurs. We consider how the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) created a significant policy window. As we do so, we seek to advance theorization of the conditions under which policy change occurs and when it sticks. We ground this discussion in exploration of a salient policy matter: responding to violence against women (VAW). Shortly after the World Health Organization declared the spread of COVID-19 a global pandemic, in April 2020, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuke, Executive Director of United Nations (UN) Women—the entity of the UN dedicated to gender equality and the empowerment of women—coined VAW the “shadow pandemic” and launched a global public awareness campaign. We review the advocacy work that led in 2020 to broader recognition of VAW as a significant policy problem. That advocacy has driven policy changes at local and national levels that are intended to have long-term, trajectory-altering impacts on reducing violence. We conclude by drawing insights to guide theory-driven empirical analysis of other policy windows.","PeriodicalId":47383,"journal":{"name":"Policy and Society","volume":"249 9 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":9.3,"publicationDate":"2022-01-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90786803","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The COVID-19 pandemic has revived discussions about universal basic income (UBI) as a potential crisis response. Yet despite favorable circumstances, little actual policy change in this area was observed. This article seeks to explain this absence of policy change and to reflect on the prospects for introducing UBI schemes after the pandemic in European democracies. I argue that public opinion on UBI provides few electoral incentives to push for social policy change. Using prepandemic data from 21 European democracies and pandemic data from the UK, I show that political support for UBI has been divided between different groups who advocate conflicting policy goals and who hold divergent views about existing welfare state arrangements. While support for UBI might have increased during the pandemic, the underlying political dividing lines are likely to have remained intact. Due to these enduring divisions and the stable support for existing social policy arrangements over an untested policy, the prospects for introducing UBI schemes in the post-pandemic world remain uncertain.
{"title":"COVID-19 and welfare state support: the case of universal basic income","authors":"David Weisstanner","doi":"10.1093/polsoc/puab015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/polsoc/puab015","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The COVID-19 pandemic has revived discussions about universal basic income (UBI) as a potential crisis response. Yet despite favorable circumstances, little actual policy change in this area was observed. This article seeks to explain this absence of policy change and to reflect on the prospects for introducing UBI schemes after the pandemic in European democracies. I argue that public opinion on UBI provides few electoral incentives to push for social policy change. Using prepandemic data from 21 European democracies and pandemic data from the UK, I show that political support for UBI has been divided between different groups who advocate conflicting policy goals and who hold divergent views about existing welfare state arrangements. While support for UBI might have increased during the pandemic, the underlying political dividing lines are likely to have remained intact. Due to these enduring divisions and the stable support for existing social policy arrangements over an untested policy, the prospects for introducing UBI schemes in the post-pandemic world remain uncertain.","PeriodicalId":47383,"journal":{"name":"Policy and Society","volume":"56 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":9.3,"publicationDate":"2022-01-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76172528","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The coronavirus pandemic has interrupted labor markets, triggering massive and instant series of experimentations with flexible work arrangements, and new relationships to centralized working environments. These approaches have laid the basis for the “new normal,” likely extending into the organization of work in the post-pandemic era. These new arrangements, especially flexible work arrangements, have challenged traditional relationships with employees and employers, work time and working hours, the work–life balance (WLB), and the relationship of individuals to work. This paper investigates how labor markets have been interrupted due to the pandemic, focusing especially on manual (blue-collar) and nonmanual (white-collar) work and the future of the WLB, along with exploring the projected deviations that are driving a foreseeable future policy revolution in work and employment. This paper argues that although hybrid and remote working would be more popular in the post-pandemic for nonmanual work, it will not be “one size fits all” solution. Traditional work practices will remain, and offices will not completely disappear. Manual labor will continue current work practices with increased demands. Employers’ attention to employees’ WLB in the new normal will target employees’ motivation and achieving better WLB. These trends for the labor market and WLB are classified into three categories—those that are predicated on changes that were already underway but were accelerated with arrival of the pandemic (“acceleration”); those that represent normalization of what were once considered avant-garde ways of work (“normalization”); and those that represent modification or alteration of pre-pandemic set-up (“remodelling”).
{"title":"“New normal” at work in a post-COVID world: work–life balance and labor markets","authors":"L. Vyas","doi":"10.1093/polsoc/puab011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/polsoc/puab011","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The coronavirus pandemic has interrupted labor markets, triggering massive and instant series of experimentations with flexible work arrangements, and new relationships to centralized working environments. These approaches have laid the basis for the “new normal,” likely extending into the organization of work in the post-pandemic era. These new arrangements, especially flexible work arrangements, have challenged traditional relationships with employees and employers, work time and working hours, the work–life balance (WLB), and the relationship of individuals to work. This paper investigates how labor markets have been interrupted due to the pandemic, focusing especially on manual (blue-collar) and nonmanual (white-collar) work and the future of the WLB, along with exploring the projected deviations that are driving a foreseeable future policy revolution in work and employment. This paper argues that although hybrid and remote working would be more popular in the post-pandemic for nonmanual work, it will not be “one size fits all” solution. Traditional work practices will remain, and offices will not completely disappear. Manual labor will continue current work practices with increased demands. Employers’ attention to employees’ WLB in the new normal will target employees’ motivation and achieving better WLB. These trends for the labor market and WLB are classified into three categories—those that are predicated on changes that were already underway but were accelerated with arrival of the pandemic (“acceleration”); those that represent normalization of what were once considered avant-garde ways of work (“normalization”); and those that represent modification or alteration of pre-pandemic set-up (“remodelling”).","PeriodicalId":47383,"journal":{"name":"Policy and Society","volume":"8 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":9.3,"publicationDate":"2022-01-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91071911","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article joins with others in this special issue to examine the evolution of our understanding of how the coronavirus disease (COVID)-19 pandemic impacted policy ideas and routines across a wide variety of sectors of government activity. Did policy ideas and routines transform as a result of the pandemic or were they merely a continuation of the status quo ante? If they did transform, are the transformations temporary in nature or likely to lead to significant, deep and permanent reform to existing policy paths and trajectories? As this article sets out, the literature on policy punctuations has evolved and helps us understand the impact of COVID-19 on policy-making but tends to conflate several distinct aspects of path trajectories and deviations under the general concept of “critical junctures” which muddy reflections and findings. Once the different possible types of punctuations have been clarified, however, the result is a set of concepts related to path creation and disruption—especially that of “path clearing”—which are better able to provide an explanation of the kinds of policy change to be expected to result from the impact of events such as the 2019 coronavirus pandemic.
{"title":"Re-thinking the coronavirus pandemic as a policy punctuation: COVID-19 as a path-clearing policy accelerator","authors":"J. Hogan, Michael Howlett, M. Murphy","doi":"10.1093/polsoc/puab009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/polsoc/puab009","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article joins with others in this special issue to examine the evolution of our understanding of how the coronavirus disease (COVID)-19 pandemic impacted policy ideas and routines across a wide variety of sectors of government activity. Did policy ideas and routines transform as a result of the pandemic or were they merely a continuation of the status quo ante? If they did transform, are the transformations temporary in nature or likely to lead to significant, deep and permanent reform to existing policy paths and trajectories? As this article sets out, the literature on policy punctuations has evolved and helps us understand the impact of COVID-19 on policy-making but tends to conflate several distinct aspects of path trajectories and deviations under the general concept of “critical junctures” which muddy reflections and findings. Once the different possible types of punctuations have been clarified, however, the result is a set of concepts related to path creation and disruption—especially that of “path clearing”—which are better able to provide an explanation of the kinds of policy change to be expected to result from the impact of events such as the 2019 coronavirus pandemic.","PeriodicalId":47383,"journal":{"name":"Policy and Society","volume":"80 1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":9.3,"publicationDate":"2022-01-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87968151","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The societal and policy transformations associated with the coronavirus disease pandemic are currently subject of intense academic debate. In this paper, we contribute to this debate by adopting a systemic perspective on policy change, shedding light on the hidden and indirect crisis effects. Based on a comprehensive analysis of policy agenda developments in Germany, we find that the pandemic led to profound shifts in political attention across policy areas. We demonstrate that these agenda gains and losses per policy area vary by the extent to which the respective areas can be presented as relevant in managing the coronavirus disease crisis and its repercussions. Moreover, relying on the analysis of past four economic crises, we also find that there is limited potential for catching up dynamics after the crisis is over. Policy areas that lost agenda share during crisis are unlikely to make up for these losses by strong attention gains once the crisis is over. Crises have hence substantial, long-term and so far, neglected effects on policymaking in modern democracies.
{"title":"What has happened and what has not happened due to the coronavirus disease pandemic: a systemic perspective on policy change","authors":"Christoph Knill, Yves Steinebach","doi":"10.1093/polsoc/puab008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/polsoc/puab008","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The societal and policy transformations associated with the coronavirus disease pandemic are currently subject of intense academic debate. In this paper, we contribute to this debate by adopting a systemic perspective on policy change, shedding light on the hidden and indirect crisis effects. Based on a comprehensive analysis of policy agenda developments in Germany, we find that the pandemic led to profound shifts in political attention across policy areas. We demonstrate that these agenda gains and losses per policy area vary by the extent to which the respective areas can be presented as relevant in managing the coronavirus disease crisis and its repercussions. Moreover, relying on the analysis of past four economic crises, we also find that there is limited potential for catching up dynamics after the crisis is over. Policy areas that lost agenda share during crisis are unlikely to make up for these losses by strong attention gains once the crisis is over. Crises have hence substantial, long-term and so far, neglected effects on policymaking in modern democracies.","PeriodicalId":47383,"journal":{"name":"Policy and Society","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":9.3,"publicationDate":"2022-01-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76730990","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The coronavirus disease pandemic has exposed differences in the capacity of governments around the world to integrate and coordinate different policy instruments into a coherent response. In this article, we conceptualize and empirically examine policy integration in responses to the coronavirus disease crisis in 35 countries. We then discuss how the interplay between restrictions, health protection, and economic policy has been articulated between, on the one hand, a policy design based on the complementarity of pro-public health and pro-economy measures, implying an integrated response, and, on the other, a policy design based on the perception of an inherent trade-off between the two. Finally, we discuss three implications from our analysis of policy integration against the coronavirus disease crisis for the post-COVID state: (a) the normalization and adaptation of integrated crisis responses; (b) the possible acceleration and “catching up” of problem-solving capacity as governments may use the crisis as an instance to put into place new social policies; and (c) policy integration as an accelerator of policy complexity and resistance against technocracy in the post-COVID state.
{"title":"Policy integration, problem-solving, and the coronavirus disease crisis: lessons for policy design","authors":"M. Maggetti, Philipp Trein","doi":"10.1093/polsoc/puab010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/polsoc/puab010","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The coronavirus disease pandemic has exposed differences in the capacity of governments around the world to integrate and coordinate different policy instruments into a coherent response. In this article, we conceptualize and empirically examine policy integration in responses to the coronavirus disease crisis in 35 countries. We then discuss how the interplay between restrictions, health protection, and economic policy has been articulated between, on the one hand, a policy design based on the complementarity of pro-public health and pro-economy measures, implying an integrated response, and, on the other, a policy design based on the perception of an inherent trade-off between the two. Finally, we discuss three implications from our analysis of policy integration against the coronavirus disease crisis for the post-COVID state: (a) the normalization and adaptation of integrated crisis responses; (b) the possible acceleration and “catching up” of problem-solving capacity as governments may use the crisis as an instance to put into place new social policies; and (c) policy integration as an accelerator of policy complexity and resistance against technocracy in the post-COVID state.","PeriodicalId":47383,"journal":{"name":"Policy and Society","volume":"5 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":9.3,"publicationDate":"2022-01-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77317839","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}