Policymaking in a low-trust state: legitimacy, state capacity, and responses to COVID-19 in Hong Kong

Abstract

With indiscriminate geographic and socioeconomic reach, COVID-19 has visited destruction of life and livelihoods on a largely unprepared world and can arguably be declared the new millennium's most trying test of state capacity. Governments are facing an urgent mandate to mobilize quickly and comprehensively in response, drawing not only on public resources and coordination capabilities but also on the cooperation and buy-in of civil society. Political and institutional legitimacy are crucial determinants of effective crisis management, and low-trust states lacking such legitimacy suffer a profound disadvantage. Social and economic crises attending the COVID-19 pandemic thus invite scholarly reflection about public attitudes, social leadership, and the role of social and institutional memory in the context of systemic disruption. This article examines Hong Kong as a case where failure to respond effectively could have been expected due to low levels of public trust and political legitimacy, but where, in fact, crisis response was unexpectedly successful. The case exposes underdevelopment in scholarly assumptions about the connections among political legitimacy, societal capacity, and crisis response capabilities. As such, this calls for a more nuanced understanding of how social behaviours and norms are structured and reproduced amidst existential uncertainties and policy ambiguities caused by sudden and convergent crises, and how these can themselves generate resources that bolster societal capacity in the fight against pandemics.

Risk Reduction of COVID-19 Pandemic in Pakistan

“…Moreover, the risk reeducation is minimized significantly by adding the respiratory hygienic conditions among individuals such as wearing masks, washing of mouth properly, cover nose and mouth while cough and sneezing (Jianhua, 2020). These study findings are also supported and similar to the several pieces of research conducted on the subject under discussions such as Hartley and Jarvis (2020), Freedman (2020), and Assessor (2020).…”

“…Recent year has been observed as a massive level COVID-19 outbreak in all over the world (Freedman, 2020;Leong et al, 2020;Lum, Shi, Wong, & Wong, 2020;Sadhu et al, 2020). It affects most of the countries adversely such as China (Jianhua, 2020;Li et al, 2020), United States, Italy (Stefanini, Azzolini, & Condorelli, 2020), United Kingdom (Freedman, 2020), Spain and France (WHO, 2020a), Australia (Shakespeare-Finch et al, 2020), Turkey (Haktanir, Seki, & Dilmaç, 2020), Hong Kong (Hartley & Jarvis, 2020), Africa (Ezenwa et al, 2020), and Pakistan (Khan et al, 2020;Noreen et al, 2020) including other countries (WHO, 2020a(WHO, , 2020b(WHO, , 2020c. It is pertinent here to mention that this outbreak results in multiple problems including fear and death at a large level (Hussain et al, 2020).…”

Influenza vaccine uptake, COVID-19 vaccination intention and vaccine hesitancy among nurses: A survey

“…Thus, the difference in COVID-19 vaccination intention from the world average may be attributed to the geographical differences rather than our special sub-population. We speculated that the relatively low vaccination intention may in part be explained by the successful crisis response on the COVID-19 epidemic in Hong Kong ( Hartley and Jarvis, 2020 ) and the distrust in health authorities (e.g., Hartley and Jarvis, 2020 ; Siu, 2012 ). Empirical data are needed to substantiate these propositions.…”

An Ethnographic Examination of People’s Reactions to State-Led COVID-19 Measures in Sierra Leone

“…The success in responding to a health epidemic is argued to be related to, at least in part, state capacity and legitimacy (see Boone and Batsell 2001 ; Hartley and Jarvis 2020 ; Woo 2020 ). For example, Boone and Batsell ( 2001 ) show how different countries have responded to the AIDS epidemic to varying levels of success based on a state’s willingness and capacity to do so.…”