Security Governance in East Asia and China’s Response to COVID-19

Abstract

A non-state centric approach challenged the concept of security governance in response to a changed security environment, bringing fragmentation of authority and heterarchical structures into the framework. The existing studies on this approach are largely contextualized from the European experience and developments in its security architecture. This leads to the questions as to whether and how non-state centric security governance occurs in other regions. This article contributes to the literature by studying security governance in East Asia, where the state is a dominant feature in security governance, and through the lens of non-traditional security, with China’s COVID-19 response as a case study. In this particular case, we find that security governance that opens spaces for greater involvement of actors beyond the state could happen, albeit in a more circumscribed manner and subject of certain conditions. We identify three conditions that catalyze the opening of governance spaces: when the capacity of the state is stretched to the limits, when the legitimacy of the government is under pressure, and when there is trust between the government and other actors.

Complex network-based research on organization collaboration and cooperation governance responding to COVID-19

“…Owing to a lack of fragmentation or hierarchical structures of authority, it was difficult for cooperative governance to be enhanced, limiting the opportunity to increase involvement of actors. This phenomenon was also found by Caballero-Anthony and Gong (2021), who called it “a circumscribed manner subjected to certain systematic conditions”, which is common in developed or low-income regions with limited resources (Nawaz et al. , 2020).…”

Magnitude and Determinants of Mortalities Related to COVID-19: Evidence from 94 Countries Using Regression Techniques

“…There has been a sudden spurt of academic studies cutting across various domains of knowledge on the factors contributing to the increase of COVID-19 pandemic cases, transmissions and deaths. These studies mainly focus on the following: spatial effects of COVID-19 (Guliyev 2020); effects on temperature and humidity variations in the number of COVID-19 deaths (Ma et al 2020;Wu et al 2020;Qi et al 2020); environmental impacts on COVID-19 transmission (Xu et al 2020); air pollution and COVID-19 infection (Yongjian et al 2020;Bontempi 2020); maternal deaths due to COVID-19 (Hantoushzadeh et al 2020); association between the COVID-19 cases and deaths (Sarkodie and Owusu 2020); COVID-19 and stock market volatility (Sreenu and Pradhan 2022); COVID-19 and microfinance institutions (Sangwan et al 2021); social distancing and COVID-19 death (Conyon et al 2020); labour mobility and fatality due to COVID-19 (Wright et al 2020); nationalism and COVID-19 (Wang 2021;Gülseven 2021;Zhao 2021;Pan and Korolev 2021;Lin 2021;Givens and Mistur 2021;Yang and Chen 2021;Zhao 2021;Boylan et al 2021;Albertoni and Wise 2021;He and Chen 2021); global politics and COVID-19 (Salvati 2021;Makarychev and Romashko 2021;Chen 2021; Wang and Sun 2021;Lin 2021;Huang 2021;Chang 2021;Jaworsky and Qiaoan 2021;Caballero-Anthony and Gong 2021); mitigating measures against COVID-19 (Zhang et al 2021;Ullah et al 2021).…”

Country-Level Governance Indicators as Predictors of COVID-19 Morbidity, Mortality, and Vaccination Coverage: An Exploratory Global Analysis

“…Although governance is an important factor in influencing a country’s success in combating the pandemic, socioeconomic status is also insightful as it helps policymakers to develop strategies and measures to protect their country currently and in the future. 45 When a country healthcare system is at maximum capacity (e.g., Bosnia, Pakistan, India), the legitimacy of the government is challenged (e.g., Egypt), and with trust issues between the government and other actors, 46 finding the true values of COVID-19 statistics will be challenging.…”