The objective of this collection of essays is to gain insights into the different national-level state responses to COVID-19 around the world and the conditions that shaped them. The pandemic offers a natural experiment wherein the policy problem governments faced was the same but the responses they made were different, creating opportunities for comparison of both the kinds of policy tools being used and the factors that accounted for their choice. Accordingly, after surveying on-line databases of policy tools used in the pandemic and subjecting these to topic modelling to reveal the characteristics of a 'standard' national pandemic response, we discuss the similarities and differences found in specific responses. This is done with reference to the nature and level of policy capacity of respective governments, highlighting the critical roles played by (in)adequate preparation and lesson-drawing from past experiences with similar outbreaks or crises. Taken together the articles show how the national responses to the COVID-19 pandemic were shaped by the opportunity and capacity each government had to learn from previous pandemics and their capacity to operationalize and build political support for the standard portfolio of policy measures deployed to deal with the crisis. However, they also show how other factors such as the nature of national leadership, the organization of government and civil society, and blindspots towards the vulnerabilities of certain population segments also helped to shape policy responses to the pandemic.

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Background Many low- and middle-income countries are experiencing high and increasing exposure to ambient fine particulate air pollution (PM2.5). The effect of PM2.5 on infant and child mortality is usually modelled using concentration response curves extrapolated from studies conducted in settings with low ambient air pollution, which may not capture its full effect. Methods We pool data on more than half a million births from 69 nationally representative Demographic and Health Surveys that were conducted in 43 low- and middle-income countries between 1998 and 2014, and we calculate early-life exposure (exposure in utero and post partum) to ambient PM2.5 using high-resolution calibrated satellite data matched to the child’s place of residence. We estimate the association between the log of early-life PM2.5 exposure, both overall and separated by type, and the odds of neonatal and infant mortality, adjusting for child-level, parent-level and household-level characteristics. Results We find little evidence that early-life exposure to overall PM2.5 is associated with higher odds of mortality relative to low exposure to PM2.5. However, about half of PM2.5 is naturally occurring dust and sea-salt whereas half is from other sources, comprising mainly carbon-based compounds, which are mostly due to human activity. We find a very strong association between exposure to carbonaceous PM2.5 and infant mortality, particularly neonatal mortality, i.e. mortality in the first 28 days after birth. We estimate that, at the mean level of exposure in the sample to carbonaceous PM2.5—10.9 µg/m3—the odds of neonatal mortality are over 50% higher than in the absence of pollution. Conclusion Our results suggest that the current World Health Organization guideline of limiting the overall ambient PM2.5 level to less than 10 µg/m³ should be augmented with a lower limit for harmful carbonaceous PM2.5.

Pregnant mothers in Bangladesh are exposed to very high and worsening levels of ambient air pollution. Maternal exposure to fine particulate matter has been associated with low birth weight at much lower levels of exposure, leading us to suspect the potentially large effects of air pollution on stunting in children in Bangladesh. We estimate the relationship between exposure to air pollution in utero and child stunting by pooling outcome data from four waves of the nationally representative Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey conducted between 2004 and 2014, and calculating children’s exposure to ambient fine particulate matter in utero using high resolution satellite data. We find significant increases in the relative risk of child stunting, wasting, and underweight with higher levels of in utero exposure to air pollution, after controlling for other factors that have been found to contribute to child anthropometric failure. We estimate the relative risk of stunting in the second, third, and fourth quartiles of exposure as 1.074 (95% confidence interval: 1.014–1.138), 1.150 (95% confidence interval: 1.069–1.237, and 1.132 (95% confidence interval: 1.031–1.243), respectively. Over half of all children in Bangladesh in our sample were exposed to an annual ambient fine particulate matter level in excess of 46 µg/m3; these children had a relative risk of stunting over 1.13 times that of children in the lowest quartile of exposure. Reducing air pollution in Bangladesh could significantly contribute to the Sustainable Development Goal of reducing child stunting.

Summary Although policy entrepreneurship is essential for fostering policy innovations to achieve sustainable development, the literature has conflated different types of entrepreneurship and disaggregated it using inconsistent terminology. We conceptualize entrepreneurship using a six‐stream variant of the multiple streams framework (MSF)—which addresses key limitations of the original MSF—to examine entrepreneurial activities in the case of the Jyotigram Yojana, a widely recognized policy innovation for managing the energy–water nexus in Gujarat, India. We find that whereas policy and political entrepreneurship no doubt played a significant role in coupling the streams and fostering this policy innovation, the process broker, program champion, and technology innovator were also important in policy formulation, implementation, and “success.” We conclude that the six‐stream variant of MSF is useful for identifying and distinguishing various types of entrepreneurship involved in policy innovation for sustainability.