Public policy responses to COVID‐19 in Europe
At a Glance
Section titled “At a Glance”| Metadata | Details |
|---|---|
| Publication Date | 2020-12-01 |
| Journal | European Policy Analysis |
| Authors | Barry Colfer |
| Institutions | University of Cambridge, Harvard University Press |
| Citations | 24 |
Abstract
Section titled “Abstract”This introductory article to the European Policy Analysis special issue on “Public Policy Responses to COVID-19 in Europe” proceeds through four parts. Part I presents an abbreviated timeline of how the COVID-19 pandemic first emerged in China in late 2019, its recorded arrival in Europe in February, and the lockdown measures and public policy responses which followed during the first six months of 2020. Part II briefly reviews some of the contributions that an analysis of the public policy responses to COVID-19 in Europe might make to the debates in the social sciences. Part III briefly presents potential areas for future research that lie beyond the limited scope of this issue. Part IV introduces each of the fifteen contributions that follow. On 31 December 2019, the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission in Wuhan City, Hubei province, China, reported a cluster of 27 cases of pneumonia which were said to be linked to a wholesale fish and live animal market in the city. The first recorded cases of what would become known as coronavirus disease (COVID-19) and the virus that causes it (the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 -SARS-CoV-21) was confirmed in China in early January. The genetic sequence of the virus was shared publicly on 11-12 January shortly after the first death had been recorded in China—that of a 61-year-old man with underlying health conditions. By 13 January Thailand had recorded its first case—the first outside of China—and by 20 January human-to-human transmission of the disease was confirmed by the Lancet medical journal (Chan et al., 2020). The first cases of COVID-19 in Europe were recorded in France and Germany on 24 and 28 January 2020, respectively. In each case, infections related to persons who had recently traveled from China. On 26 January, the Stockholm-based European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC)—an independent EU agency responsible for strengthening Europe’s defenses and preparedness against infectious diseases—reported that there was “a high likelihood” of cases being imported into those European countries with the greatest volume of people traveling to and from Wuhan and Central China (ECDC, 2020) and on 30 January the World Health Organisation (WHO) designated the outbreak of novel coronavirus a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) (WHO, 2020a). Over the coming weeks, several European countries implemented screening measures for travelers arriving from China and many airlines suspended flights to and from the region altogether in a bid to limit the spread of infection. On 04 February, a first major outbreak of COVID-19 was recorded outside of China on board the Diamond Princess, a British-registered cruise ship. The ship, along with its passengers and crew, was quarantined for almost a month in the Port of Yokohama in Japan. By mid-March, more than 700 of the 3,711 on board had tested positive for COVID-19, accounting for more than half of the recorded infections outside of China, and at least seven passengers died with the illness in the following month (Mallaparty, 2020). By mid-February, amid increasing cases of human-to-human transmission around the globe, the ECDC considered the risk for capacity in European healthcare systems to be overwhelmed by any outbreaks of COVID-19 at the peak of the influenza season (typically between November and April in the northern hemisphere, which includes Europe) to be “low to moderate,” while the risk to the health of visitors and residents in areas with elevated rates of infection to be high. On 22 February, in what was the first major case of community transmission in Europe—that is, where infection was not associated with travel to an infected region—Italian authorities reported clusters of COVID-19 across northern Italy in the regions of Lombardy, Piedmont, and Veneto. In a bid to better understand the nature of the virus, including its symptoms and methods of transmission, and the potential for prevention and containment, ECDC and WHO began a joint twelve-day mission to the region on 24 February. By the start of March, ECDC had identified the risk associated with COVID-19 infection in Europe to be moderate to high, based on the probability of transmission and the impact of the disease. On 08 March, the Italian government became the first in Europe to introduce restrictions on movement and to impose social distancing requirements in the country’s most affected regions. The measures were extended to cover the whole country on 11 March as the reproductive rate of the virus increased—the same day the WHO declared the COVID-19 outbreak to be a global pandemic (WHO, 2020b). In the weeks that followed, most other European countries introduced similar public health measures in a bid to combat the spread of the virus. The suite of COVID-19 responses introduced by policy-makers across Europe was broadly similar, involving restrictions on economic activity, the promotion of social distancing, and the interdiction of large gatherings, and typically included the closure of schools, universities, and businesses that were deemed non-essential. While broadly similar in nature and design, the modalities, specificities, and duration of restrictive measures differed markedly, as did the timing of their introduction. Most European governments introduced legislative measures to underpin the measures by mid-March, including in France, Germany, and Spain, while a handful of governments opted not to, aiming instead to promote voluntary practices to halt the spread of the disease and to reach for “herd immunity,” whereby society would gain immunity through widespread exposure, as occurred in Sweden and the United Kingdom (see Petridou, 2020; Colfer, 2020a. It is now clear that the introduction of lockdown measures across Europe early-on in the pandemic saved millions of lives (NIHR, 2020). Meanwhile, as the pandemic took hold, economic activity fell, supply chains seized up, and tax revenues dwindled. European and US stock markets reported historic losses throughout the first half of the year as the IMF predicted a deep recession in 2020 and a slow recovery in 2021, with global output projected to decline by almost 5% (Gopinath, 2020). At the same time, government expenditure on healthcare and social protection rose dramatically, as unemployment in the EU rose to 7.4% in August (Eurostat, 2020) and many workers were temporarily laid off. In what may be one of the most enduring structural changes brought about by the pandemic, up to 40% of the European workforce began working from home, at least in part, while many frontline workers in healthcare, transport, and delivery services were unable to do so (Ahrendt et al., 2020). At the time of writing (October 2020), there have been over 34 million recorded cases of COVID-19 and over 1 million deaths associated with the disease globally, of which more than 5 million cases of infection and more than 200,000 deaths have been in Europe. Over only a few weeks, the pandemic introduced fundamentally new economic, political and social realities across the globe. Government responses, and the nature of their implementation, present important questions and lessons for the practice and study of public policy. This episode has also laid bare the capacity, preparedness, and willingness of policy-makers in Europe and elsewhere to respond to an unanticipated crisis as it develops. In particular, differing levels of capacity in healthcare and social protection systems became apparent as the crisis unfolded. The analysis of the onset of COVID-19, and the public policy measures mobilized in Europe in response to it, contribute to a range of related and overlapping debates in the social sciences. This includes as regards: the role of the state; how policy-makers respond to crises; the nature of political behavior; the legitimacy of public policy; and the future of the EU, to give only a few examples. COVID-19 has ushered in a new era of state-sponsored and state-directed activity around the globe, and the crisis has seen a changing and increasing role for public policy in the day-to-day lives of most Europeans. Arguably this episode provides an opportunity to assess the role and functioning of state institutions and programs in people’s lives—and even to reimagine what the fundamental role of the state can be in the 21st century. The capacity of states to manage and oversee lockdowns, including by meeting the surge in demand for intensive care beds and personal protective equipment (PPE) in hospitals and care settings, as well as the enormous social protection costs associated with supporting citizens experiencing a sudden loss of income, was exposed during the initial months of the pandemic (Hassenteufel, 2020). This gave rise to debates about the prospect of fiscal burden-sharing between member states in the EU, as we shall see (Camous & Claeys, 2020; van Overbeke & Stadig, 2020). The early stages of the pandemic also tested the resilience of state institutions and their ability to function without permanent or stable governments following inconclusive elections, as was the case in both Belgium and Ireland. The pandemic in Europe also provided a number of examples of multicentric (Neuvonen, 2020) and multi-level governance in action as some states tailored responses to the specific needs and interests of different communities, regions, and devolved authorities, as was the case for example in Italy and the UK (see Colfer, 2020b; Malandrino & Demichelis, 2020). Building on this, an analysis of public policy responses to COVID-19 in Europe can contribute to the crisis management literature (Boin et al., 2017; Brändström & Kuipers, 2003; Drennan et al., 2014). For example, COVID-19 shows how a similar set of circumstances—in this instance, the onset of a global health crisis—can be managed and framed differently across various polities and political contexts. For example, ‘t Hart (2014) argues that crises may be best understood as situational in nature, involving events and forces that are largely exogenous and temporary, or institutional in nature, involving factors that are more fundamental, intrinsic and deep-seated, and it is possible that a situational crisis could evolve into or merge with an institutional one. For example, in the case of Cyprus, lesson-learning from the early Chinese experience of COVID-19 is said to have allowed that country to prevent a situational crisis from morphing into an institutional disaster as the country’s policy response prevented public services from becoming overwhelmed (Petridou et al., 2020). Relatedly, an analysis of public policy responses to COVID-19 can reveal much about political behavior, and how leaders deal with uncertainty, risk, and expertise. Risk and uncertainty are an inherent part of policy-making, and managing risk and the unknown is central to what modern governments do (Clapton, 2011; Colfer, 2020a; Versluis et al., 2019). Especially during crises, the functioning of governing institutions is tested and policy-makers must often make complex judgments with imperfect information, under great uncertainty, time pressure, and heightened levels of scrutiny (Malandrino & Demichelis, 2020; Svedin, 2011). Faced with a crisis like COVID-19, governments could pursue a “blame avoidance strategy,” designed to depoliticize an issue and to share or avoid responsibility, or a “credit claiming strategy” when fighting for validation and political survival (Hood, 2007, 2011). The pandemic presents opportunities to understand how and why governments seek to avoid blame or take credit by focusing on questions of agency, presentation, and policy-making under COVID-19 (Zahariadis et al., 2020). The pandemic also raises questions about the role of experts in determining public policy. There is inevitably tension between scientific and public health considerations and economic realities when undertaking policy-making during a pandemic. Dewey (2012 pp. 152-160) argue that decision-making should rely primarily on the advice of experts (see also Blumer, 1948 and Lippmann, 1997) and van Nispen and Scholten (2017) posit that turbulent times can present opportunities for policy-makers to use expert knowledge in the contested and politicized setting of a crisis. The extent to which public policy responses to COVID-19 were based on health, political, or economic imperatives, and the extent to which politicians or unelected experts were to the fore in framing political messaging, varied considerably across Europe and had a major bearing on the nature and timing of decisions. COVID-19 can also reveal something about how citizens respond to restrictive public policy measures, and whether policies made under crisis conditions are perceived as legitimate or can become politically contested. Under COVID-19, in some cases at least, it was clear that, when faced with a common external threat, initial restrictions were met with approval by a majority of citizens and a “rally round the flag” effect was recorded which favored incumbents (Baker & O’Neal, 2001). However, as the initial uncertainty of the crisis gave way to “the new normal,” and as states of emergency endured, support for limitations on economic and social activity began to drop in some quarters (Naumann et al., 2020). This was framed in part by the extent to which polices are seen as legitimate (Mettler & Soss, 2004) and the experience of the confinement policies clearly feed back into the political process by altering political attitudes and public risk perceptions (Pierson, 1993; Skocpol, 1992) as, over time, people can adapt their perceptions, having first overestimated their chances of being infected (see Breznau, 2020; Naumann et al., 2020). The public policy responses to the pandemic inevitably undermine civil liberties and fundamental rights in the interest of public health. Vocal resistance in some quarters to certain aspects of the lockdown measures have been registered, be it against face-coverings or restrictions on public gatherings, for example, in Germany (see Naumann et al., 2020) or from interest groups advocating for a different balance between economic and social interests, as has been seen in Switzerland (see Sager & Mavrot, 2020). Indeed, there is always the possibility of emergency restrictions being used to justify arbitrarily curtailing civil liberties, making this balance an important subject for democratic oversight and scholarly attention (see Adam, 2020; Neuvonen, 2020). COVID-19 struck as the EU had entered its second decade of crisis, following the fallout from the post-2008 economic and social crises, the refugee crisis since 2015, impending climate on many of Europe’s and the of the UK since to a few of the most the from the public health and social protection the pandemic it is clear that the introduction of emergency measures at any time a of democratic and of the prospect of and political in some of Europe’s more (see Adam, 2020; 2020). the onset of COVID-19 has the central role of and on the of workers to many including and 2020). the impact of COVID-19, the of the common market and the of the was clearly by the pandemic (Camous & Claeys, 2020). this, the EU to in the of to the regions affected by the crisis through the recovery resistance from several northern member with The being the most the be from on markets by the Commission on of the EU and a fiscal at EU one of the most important in EU in a 2020b; 2020). This in to the and around the at a response to the and crises over the and an important for research and of the in this many more and in the contributions in this special issue. There are many more debates and that a analysis of this deal that the contributions in this issue on public policy responses to COVID-19 in Europe in the first six months of 2020. However, we that this issue can a on which future research can be research with a may on a range of and of for public policy that are not in in this issue. In the the impact of the pandemic on the and health of the and on the social that the of confinement public policy as the impact of COVID-19 on the market and the future of The for this is by the role by frontline workers in society functioning throughout the pandemic and the increasing for many et al., 2020). to promote the health and of frontline workers and how to and support an workforce be of The way the pandemic changes how we use and and how and are under COVID-19 policy of as of personal are in new for example, with scrutiny and democratic oversight 2019). The delivery of a one be one of the greatest in and future research must how supply chains must be to the needs of the COVID-19 Relatedly, restrictions on the prospect of the for and the potential to supply may new policy and that research might the impact of the pandemic has been differently across the are faced with the greatest social and health of COVID-19, while people and market must deal with the second recession in a decade and the prospect of economic and social and policy This special issue reviews public policy responses to COVID-19 in more than European countries in the first months of the coronavirus crisis from January to 2020. This includes the when the WHO declared a pandemic on 11 March 2020, when most European countries first introduced limitations on social and economic activity that were designed to halt the spread of the virus, and when governments began to restrictions from While in way this issue presents a of how the initial stages of the COVID-19 crisis were by policy-makers across a range of different European countries and including Cyprus, France, Germany, Spain, the United and the as well as in China and at the of the reviews the public policy responses in countries and to the by policy-makers their and settings, and to to debates in the social sciences. The to this issue from a range of and including from political and public and are based in more than across Europe and The issue on a at the for European at in and most of the were at during the The of this briefly reviews each of the contributions that make up this special issue. Italy was one of the countries most affected by the outbreak of COVID-19, and became the first European country to both a and lockdown in the of the health crisis. Malandrino and how the response to the public health emergency brought with it a high of uncertainty the of decision-making along the government and the of by public The article shows how this and the policy-making and in this, the first the of decision-making between and authorities the of by The based on both political and public the of policy and case and for an of the Italian response to the crisis as a case in which the of institutional uncertainty, which in affected and how the COVID-19 crisis was in France by policy changes and in the public health argues that the response is at least by the of a health crisis, that of in which was as a and which to the of the agency to to and This why health authorities were for the crisis, as by the of and intensive care beds when the pandemic as well as by the large number of infections and in the The a second that public policy responses in France, the of political and in the as the of decision-making and of for measures, which did to The also raises the of the impact of COVID-19 on future health policy-making in France, and on the contested role of civil in the of health policy & 2020). the case of Spain, one of the countries affected by the pandemic in of rates of infection and The article the of the crisis for and the central to the pandemic by focusing on the political and structural factors that a more and response in that the public policy responses to COVID-19 in and the United their countries took different in the early stages of the crisis. The government to introduce restrictions on movement and social activity and introduced a lockdown on March in with most of the of Europe. Meanwhile, after a slow initial response with for the United Kingdom restrictions only on 20 March and became a in cases of analysis of cases different of the role of and how risk is perceived by policy-makers that the to the crisis. Meanwhile, as the pandemic the responses to the pandemic in different of the UK as the leaders of the devolved governments different political on when to introduce or This raises questions about the of in the and the Sager and the public policy response to the pandemic in what see as in that country’s crisis decision-making occurred elsewhere in the government to introduce measures to limit the infection rate and to However, while the on health experts and outside the when and the country’s lockdown measures, the shows clear of as the to the lockdown was clearly by primarily economic following by interests in the most by for The that in institutional even when by a state of emergency as COVID-19 Europe with an While the virus to be in nature, not of government responses were largely governments in complex multi-level policy at the and In their Overbeke and at the crisis response in the and the to understand the impact of that process on the political The argue that multi-level policy in both countries has up against the of to political In slow between the central and governments the into while in the the of European institutions with fiscal policy has the of the EU fiscal in public The response to COVID-19 was to pursue “herd without the of restrictive measures on economic and social not only from other European also from other countries that are and The that from an analysis of the case the why the country to take a response to the onset of the pandemic with most of the of Europe. the response to the pandemic in Sweden as the which to through an analysis of the of in the of public and the devolved governance that on public and public The that the between and in Sweden in an initial set of responses that was The response in with high political the and was to, than restrictive The with a that the response in for how initial policy response to COVID-19 the use of emergency with legislative by the The article first the between decision-making scientific and the of the in the of COVID-19 policy. The analysis shows how policy-making during the state of emergency about to and the of public This case is considered in the of complex multicentric policy-making, and whether the for by central government a in the in the emergency conditions. ‘t (2014) of crises, et the public policy response to a situational crisis, the authorities lessons from the Chinese experience to prevent the onset of the virus from into a institutional The between situational and institutional crises, ‘t Hart is that the events that are largely considered exogenous temporary, while institutional crises more intrinsic institutional and a that is brought into during a crisis. The lessons the authorities from the Chinese experience of COVID-19 the impact of the of information, and the of expert in the response The article with on what this might for public under crisis. et at the cases of and and how leaders and policy-makers may to or in times of crisis, uncertainty, and political a by and it with from Brändström and the article the factors the use of of and the of public policy responses to the COVID-19 crisis in The the in the political and with for political survival as leaders to balance public political and public health during the pandemic. Meanwhile, focusing on that in the early of the crisis, more governments were better to policies than their democratic Under the lockdown measures are to and economic and social activity is more always at a and this might be in a global pandemic that public and In and across the pandemic a drop in The by governments to a is to introduce fiscal policy policy to be limited to a of market a of willingness by governments to be exposed to market fiscal policy this This occurred in the of the public policy response to COVID-19 not government that clearly fundamental civil rights and EU governments have as often travel and to citizens from Central and European countries could not COVID-19 in this way European and the between and in those a on the case of and with to and the the conditions and that policy and argues that systems a role in policy as for policy and as for from one occurred to a country’s the economic and political of the COVID-19 crisis for the states of the on and and this article how factors the sudden in decision-making brought about by the the of of and the of fiscal to from the EU, and other of and in the early months of the pandemic. an of the between government and EU in the this article argues that while in the in the fiscal risk state and the democratic on Naumann et at the of assess public support for COVID-19 policies in The first the policies during the first weeks of restrictions and on from the how public support for the most important policies has been In so the article on the of the social and political of the confinement on democratic the article the to which the measures were seen as legitimate or not by a of this is important for policy-makers as the extent to which a policy is seen as legitimate often whether people that policy. The analysis shows that, following initial widespread support for the lockdown measures in March, support for limitations on economic and social activity The onset of COVID-19 many of the and economic the and the measures by the European institutions in the initial stages of the pandemic and whether were to the of the economic crises as The article first reviews how institutions emergency the European Central its programs and the European credit to member This and political which the way for a and institutional a first a fiscal with between countries and common This to be politically for This article this issue by on what this might for the future of Europe.