I do it my way. Understanding policy variation in pandemic response across Europe

Abstract

To contain the spread of the Covid-19, governments have designed and implemented a large range of exceptional measures. Yet, the restrictive nature of the policy options chosen and the severity of their enforcement mechanisms considerably vary across countries. Focusing on the case of the European Union – a group of closely connected nations which develop some forms of supranational policy coordination to manage the pandemic -, we first map the diversity of policy responses taken using two original indicators : the stringency and scope of freedom limitations and the depth of control used in their enforcement. Second, we elaborate a comprehensive set of eight hypotheses to explain cross-national variation in pandemic policy-making. Our exploratory results – based on bivariate statistical associations – reveal that structural determinants – the level of political and interpersonal trust, a country’s overall resources, democratic experience and, to a lesser extent, political check and balances – shape crisis policy-making more than conjectural factors such as the magnitude of the crisis at stake. These results call for further research into the determinants of crisis policy-making that we propose to address with a new research project focusing on the modalities, determinants and impacts of exceptional decision making in times of Covid-19.

The Resilience of Democracy in the Midst of the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…Systems characterised by weak and limited counterpowers are the most vulnerable to democratic and human rights loss when a crisis hits. This finding holds specifically in the case of France, which, despite being a longestablished democracy, has experienced among the most stringent restrictive measures in Europe, together with Hungary and Poland (Egger et al, 2021). In contrast, the Netherlands was much less vulnerable owing to its power sharing arrangements.…”

“…In Europe as well, there is evidence of a partisan effect. Right-wing national conservative parties -such as Fidesz in Hungary or the PiS in Poland -have implemented the toughest restrictions on democratic governance and civil liberties (Egger et al, 2021). We therefore expect parties' ideologies to shape their preference for specific uses of democratic compensators.…”

“…Yet the agreement restricted Wilmès first cabinet's scope for action to pandemic management. Following this decision, all supporting parties in addition to the N-VA, which voted in favour of granting special powers, were included in the committee in charge of managing the pandemic (Faniel & Sägesser, 2020). The parties were represented by their presidents and, in the case of the N-VA, the group leader at the House.…”

“…Although the Netherlands implemented minimal restrictions, democratic compensators strictly limiting the duration of the measures and enabling derogatory statuses were introduced since the first restrictive measures were adopted. In contrast, France was one of the European countries implementing the toughest regime of restrictions without compensating for them over a long time (Egger, Magni Berton, Roché & Aarts, 2021;Terpstra, de Maillard, Salet & Roché, 2021); and once democratic compensators were introduced, they were limited in scope and targeted specific groups.…”

“…These results contribute new knowledge to the dynamics of crisis management and democratic resilience in emergency situations. So far, the literature on crisis management policies -especially in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis -has focused the analysis on restrictive measures (Bjørnskov, 2020;Bjørnskov & Voigt, 2020;Capano, Howlett, Jarvis, Ramesh & Goyal, 2020;Cheng, Barceló, Spencer, Kubinec & Messerschmidt, 2020;Egger et al, 2021;Migone, 2020). Less attention has been paid to how such measures coexist with other types of crisis-management policies, specifically measures that aim to mitigate the indirect impacts of the crisis on democratic governance, the economy or social cohesion.…”