National Government Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic : An Exploration of Policies, Factors, and Lessons (to be) Learned

Abstract

This article presents an overview and analysis of key aspects of the policy responses that governments around the world designed and implemented to cope with the COVID-19 pandemic. The article shows the complexities of government action in times of uncertainty, as policymakers had to face an unknown and unfolding crisis for which a priori there were no clearly effective tools. It also describes that, despite facing a common virus and associated challenges in health, economic, education, mobility and many other policy sectors, national governments followed a variety of policy paths. The article provides a discussion of factors that seem to have influenced policymakers’ decisions for choosing different policy mixes. The article is based on a review of the already extensive and continuously growing literature on policy responses to the pandemic in the Public Policy and Administration fields. While the objective is not to develop a “meta-analysis” or a “systematic literature review”, the paper does cover central topics which have been widely discussed in the literature. The article provides a brief account of how the pandemic came about; a discussion about the differences in national governments’ policy mixes; an analysis of the most important factors which may help to understand why, despite facing the same complex problem (or set of problems), governments around the world implemented different responses; and a few key lessons that governments could take into account to learn from these terrible years.