Capano Giliberto, Howlett Michael, Jarvis Darryl S L, Ramesh M, Goyal Nihit
University of Bologna, Italy.
Simon Fraser University, Canada.
Policy Soc. 2020 Jul 3;39(3):285-308. doi: 10.1080/14494035.2020.1787628. eCollection 2020 Sep.
The objective of this collection of essays is to gain insights into the different national-level state responses to COVID-19 around the world and the conditions that shaped them. The pandemic offers a natural experiment wherein the policy problem governments faced was the same but the responses they made were different, creating opportunities for comparison of both the kinds of policy tools being used and the factors that accounted for their choice. Accordingly, after surveying on-line databases of policy tools used in the pandemic and subjecting these to topic modelling to reveal the characteristics of a 'standard' national pandemic response, we discuss the similarities and differences found in specific responses. This is done with reference to the nature and level of policy capacity of respective governments, highlighting the critical roles played by (in)adequate preparation and lesson-drawing from past experiences with similar outbreaks or crises. Taken together the articles show how the national responses to the COVID-19 pandemic were shaped by the opportunity and capacity each government had to learn from previous pandemics and their capacity to operationalize and build political support for the standard portfolio of policy measures deployed to deal with the crisis. However, they also show how other factors such as the nature of national leadership, the organization of government and civil society, and blindspots towards the vulnerabilities of certain population segments also helped to shape policy responses to the pandemic.
本文集的目的是深入了解世界各地各国政府对新冠疫情的不同应对措施以及形成这些措施的条件。这场大流行提供了一个自然实验，即政府面临的政策问题相同，但做出的应对措施却不同，这为比较所使用的政策工具种类以及影响其选择的因素创造了机会。因此，在对大流行期间使用的政策工具在线数据库进行调查并对其进行主题建模以揭示 “标准” 国家大流行应对措施的特征之后，我们讨论了在具体应对措施中发现的异同。这是参照各国政府政策能力的性质和水平进行的，强调了充分准备以及从过去类似疫情或危机的经验中吸取教训所发挥的关键作用。这些文章共同表明，各国政府对新冠疫情的应对措施是如何受到每个政府从以往大流行中学习的机会和能力以及它们为应对危机而部署的标准政策措施组合进行实施和争取政治支持的能力所塑造的。然而，它们也表明，其他因素，如国家领导层的性质、政府和民间社会的组织形式以及对某些弱势群体的忽视，也有助于塑造对疫情的政策应对。
