Policymaking in Times of Crisis: COVID-19 and New Governance Systems

COVID-19 represents a “natural experiment”, where leaders, government officials, and policymakers faced a great unknown, uncertain how best to respond. We intend to understand different policy responses and analyse their implementation across differing contexts and institutions. We draw from governance theory to identify and explain different responses, while providing contextual understanding to establish causal factors that shape governmental policymaking. In our analytical framework, we equate temporal phases (pre-crisis, early-crisis, crisis-reaction and exit strategy) with the four stages of the crisis management cycle (prevention, preparation, response, and recovery/learning). Amid distinct phases of the COVID crisis, national governments and leaders favoured distinct policymaking processes, raising the valuable question about the conditions in which a certain approach arises. Leaders etched out national approaches, often favouring principled values with action on the national level. This approach is typical of the command-and-control, hierarchical approach to governance, incorporating values such as ‘public health’ or ‘the economy’. Elsewhere, a pragmatic leadership approach led to examples of "policy experimentation" (based on trial and error) as a response to heightened uncertainty. This policymaking style shares similarities with the theory of "experimentalist governance" adopting features such as learning, revision, and feedback loops. We argue that the COVID-19 crisis can drive “policy experimentation” beyond pilot activities towards a general approach in crisis policymaking.