Pandemic Preparedness

The Covid-19 pandemic highlighted the acute difficulty of making policy in multi-level states, in which decision-making authority is divided between the central government and regional governments. The difficulty consists of ensuring that the public health and socio-economic policy measures deployed to combat the pandemic are tailored to specific local circumstances but are nevertheless coordinated across regional and central authorities to ensure that they are effective overall.

The different experiences of the G7 countries offer a fertile ground on which to draw lessons about how and why policy coordination is achieved in multi-level states and with what effect. The overarching goal of this project is to address this gap in our knowledge in order to help multi-level states better coordinate their responses to future pandemics. To meet this goal, research is needed onto ‘how’ coordination is achieved, i.e. through what channels, mechanisms and practices.

The project’s second objective is to study the effects of policy coordination on the system of inter- governmental relations and on the stability of national constitutions. This project’s original take on policy responses to the pandemic in multi-level states is to investigate how regional policy divergence in one area created pressures either to diverge in other policy areas or, conversely, to coordinate and converge across all policy areas.