Sense or Sensibility? Different Approaches to Cope With the COVID-19 Pandemic

Turrini, Alex; Cristofoli, Daniela; Valotti, Giovanni

doi:10.1177/0275074020942427

Cited by 16 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…With COVID‐19 hitting nearly every country globally, public administration researchers can examine how and why governments worldwide have differed in their responses to the crisis (Baldwin 2021; Boin, McConell, and Hart 2021). A majority of earlier studies took a case study approach to answer this question (e.g., An and Tang 2020; Bouckaert et al 2020; Capano et al 2020; Comfort et al 2020; Downey and Myers 2020; Ramírez de la Cruz et al 2020; Turrini, Cristofoli, and Valotti 2020; Weng et al 2020; Yan et al 2020). Yet, with various COVID‐19 databases growing worldwide, more comparative research can be undertaken with quantitative approaches (George et al 2020).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Policy Design for COVID‐19: Worldwide Evidence on the Efficacies of Early Mask Mandates and Other Policy Interventions

Porcher²,

Tang

et al. 2021

Public Administration Review

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To understand the extent to which a policy instrument’s early adoption is crucial in crisis management, we leverage unique worldwide data that record the daily evolution of policy mandate adoptions and COVID‐19 infection and mortality rates. The analysis shows that the mask mandate is consistently associated with lower infection rates in the short term, and its early adoption boosts the long‐term efficacy. By contrast, the other five policy instruments—domestic lockdowns, international travel bans, mass gathering bans, and restaurant and school closures—show weaker efficacy. Governments prepared for a public health crisis with stronger resilience or capacity and those with stronger collectivist cultures were quicker to adopt nationwide mask mandates. From a policy design perspective, policymakers must avoid overreacting with less effective instruments and underreacting with more effective ones during uncertain times, especially when interventions differ in efficacy and cost.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Policy Design for COVID‐19: Worldwide Evidence on the Efficacies of Early Mask Mandates and Other Policy Interventions

Porcher²,

Tang

et al. 2021

Public Administration Review

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“…During the COVID-19 crisis, the policies in response across the different stages are interconnected. Learning plays a big role in crisis decision making because of the limited time available to policymakers, as underscored in many policy change scholarships [ 44 , 65 ]. One policy in the previous stage would evolve into another policy in the next stage.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Moreover, governments would not focus on only one policy option during a crisis due to the rapidly changing environment. In other words, in the face of rapid environmental change, there is indeed no one-size-fits-all policy for successful emergency governance [ 44 ]. Selective attention influences political choice.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding the Evolution of Government Attention in Response to COVID-19 in China: A Topic Modeling Approach

2021

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The effective control over the outbreak of COVID-19 in China showcases a prompt government response, in which, however, the allocation of attention, as an essential parameter, remains obscure. This study is designed to clarify the evolution of the Chinese government’s attention in tackling the pandemic. To this end, 674 policy documents issued by the State Council of China are collected to establish a text corpus, which is then used to extract policy topics by applying the latent dirichlet allocation (LDA) model, a topic modelling approach. It is found that the response policies take different tracks in a four-stage controlling process, and five policy topics are identified as major government attention areas in all stages. Moreover, a topic evolution path is highlighted to show internal relationships between different policy topics. These findings shed light on the Chinese government’s dynamic response to the pandemic and indicate the strength of applying adaptive governance strategies in coping with public health emergencies.

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“…On the other hand, research shows that responsive policies are highly unstable, as well as often poorly coordinated (Hale et al 2020;Turrini et al 2020). One of the unknowns concerns uncertainty with regard to the conclusions of public policy decisions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Beyond the Front-Line: the Coping Strategies and Discretion of Lithuanian Street-Level Bureaucracy During COVID-19

Dvorak¹,

Civinskas

Šumskas

2021

CJSSP

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This article presents the results of a project funded by the Research Council of Lithuania: ‘Public policy solutions and their improvement to overcome the COVID-19 crisis in Lithuanian municipalities: solution tools and service delivery.’ The research methodology is based on street-level bureaucracy theory and ongoing qualitative research in the form of interviews with social workers and doctors. Interviews were conducted in the Lithuanian municipalities which became the first COVID-19 hotspots in March-April 2020. The aim is to identify the response and coping strategies of street-level bureaucracy. The findings of current research suggest that the workload of street-level bureaucrats increased, the situation changed very rapidly, and there was a constant need to adopt rules and even recommendations issued by the ministry. Fear of COVID-19 infection, a lack of accurate information, uncertainty, and the possibility of allowing staff with children to leave the workplace led to staff shortages. This in turn motivated the administration and the remaining employees to look for suitable coping strategies.

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Sense or Sensibility? Different Approaches to Cope With the COVID-19 Pandemic

Cited by 16 publications

References 18 publications

Policy Design for COVID‐19: Worldwide Evidence on the Efficacies of Early Mask Mandates and Other Policy Interventions

Policy Design for COVID‐19: Worldwide Evidence on the Efficacies of Early Mask Mandates and Other Policy Interventions

Understanding the Evolution of Government Attention in Response to COVID-19 in China: A Topic Modeling Approach

Beyond the Front-Line: the Coping Strategies and Discretion of Lithuanian Street-Level Bureaucracy During COVID-19

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