Federalism Complicates the Response to the COVID-19 Health and Economic Crisis: What Can Be Done?

Huberfeld, Nicole; Gordon, Sarah H.; Jones, David K.

doi:10.2139/ssrn.3698878

Cited by 12 publications

(11 citation statements)

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“…Indeed, multilevel arrangements can complicate the design of response to a pandemic due to fragmentation and disjointed action (cf. Huberfeld et al., 2020). We also show how policy outcome variation can result in conflict between the actors involved in policy action and/or consumption.…”

Section: Theoretical Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conflict in decision making and variation in public administration outcomes in Italy during the COVID‐19 crisis

Malandrino

Demichelis²

2020

European Policy Analysis

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Italy has been heavily affected by the COVID‐19 pandemic. National and subnational authorities have introduced several measures to tackle the resulting crisis, including social distancing and restrictions on economic activities. However, as we will show in this contribution, such measures have sometimes resulted in uncertainty concerning the allocation of decision making powers along the central–local government continuum and regarding the exercise of administrative tasks by public authorities, thus producing conflict and variation within the policymaking and policy‐delivery processes in Italy. To show this, we review the relevant events that occurred during the pandemic in the country in light both of the literature on centralization and discretion and of the principles shaping the Italian legal system. Our analysis, based on a dialogue between political science and public law, allows us to read the Italian case as a mix of inadequate institutional coordination and insufficient and unclear central guidelines which ultimately produced uncertainty, which together had a direct impact on policymakers, policy‐deliverers, and citizens in general.

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Section: Theoretical Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conflict in decision making and variation in public administration outcomes in Italy during the COVID‐19 crisis

Malandrino

Demichelis²

2020

European Policy Analysis

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“…Lessons from US education policy invite caution in the current political and policy terrain, reeling from the reverberating effects of COVID-19 and the 2020 recession. Early work on COVID-19 explicitly implicated federalism in exacerbating the inequities that manifest in both the burden and response to COVID-19, with good reason (Huberfeld, Gordon, and Jones 2020). The operation of federalism can, indeed, perpetuate inequality (Kettl 2020).…”

Section: Figurementioning

confidence: 99%

Centralization and Subnational Capacity: The Struggle to Make Federalism Work Equitably in Public Education

Moffitt¹,

Willse²,

Smith³

et al. 2021

Perspect. polit.

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Vast disparities between and within American states’ responses to the COVID-19 pandemic have evoked renewed attention to whether greater centralization might enhance investments in subnational capacity and remedy subnational inequalities or instead erode subnational organizational capacity. Developments in American public education (1997–2015) offer perspective on this puzzle, which we examine by applying interrupted time series analysis to a novel dataset to assess the implications of centralization on subnational investments in administrative and technical capacity, two dimensions of organizational capacity. We find simultaneous subnational erosion in administrative capacity and growth in technical capacity following centralization, both of which appear concentrated in low-poverty areas despite centralization’s explicit antipoverty purposes. Public education reforms highlight both the challenge of dismantling subnational inequality through centralization and the need for future research on policy designs that enable centralization to yield subnational capacity that is able to remedy inequality.

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“…The COVID‐19 pandemic has placed substantial stress on governments and on public resources. In the United States, where states and localities possess most coercive public health authority, policymakers across political jurisdictions have responded to the pandemic by implementing varying public health interventions at different times (Gostin & Wiley, 2020; Huberfeld et al, 2020). During March 2020, social distancing measures and shelter‐in‐place orders rapidly emerged as central features of state and local responses to COVID‐19.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Public perceptions of the role of government and nonstate actors in responding to COVID‐19

Sledge

Thomas

2021

Risk Hazard & Crisis Pub Pol

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In this article, we examine public perceptions of the importance of different levels of government and of nongovernmental entities in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. By analyzing the case of COVID-19, we illuminate patterns that may be helpful for understanding public perceptions of the response to a broader range of crises, including the impacts of hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, wildfires, and other hazards. We contribute to the public policy literature on public perceptions of government response to crises and expand it to include consideration of the role of nonstate actors. Drawing on a representative survey of 1200 registered voters in Texas, we find that individuals are more likely to view government as extremely important to respond to the pandemic than nonstate actors. We find that perceptions of the role of state and nonstate actors are shaped by risk perception, political ideology and religion, gender, and race/ethnicity. We do not find evidence that direct impacts from the COVID-19 pandemic consistently shape perceptions of the role of state and nonstate actors.

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Federalism Complicates the Response to the COVID-19 Health and Economic Crisis: What Can Be Done?

Cited by 12 publications

References 0 publications

Conflict in decision making and variation in public administration outcomes in Italy during the COVID‐19 crisis

Conflict in decision making and variation in public administration outcomes in Italy during the COVID‐19 crisis

Centralization and Subnational Capacity: The Struggle to Make Federalism Work Equitably in Public Education

Public perceptions of the role of government and nonstate actors in responding to COVID‐19

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