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Centralizing and decentralizing governance in the COVID-19 pandemic: The politics of credit and blame()
COVID-19 led to significant and dynamic shifts in power relations within and between governments, teaching us how governments make health policies and how health crises affect government. We focus on centralization and decentralization within and between governments: within government, meaning the e...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Published by Elsevier B.V.
2022
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8913406/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35331575 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.healthpol.2022.03.004 |
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author | Greer, Scott L. Rozenblum, Sarah Falkenbach, Michelle Löblová, Olga Jarman, Holly Williams, Noah Wismar, Matthias |
author_facet | Greer, Scott L. Rozenblum, Sarah Falkenbach, Michelle Löblová, Olga Jarman, Holly Williams, Noah Wismar, Matthias |
author_sort | Greer, Scott L. |
collection | PubMed |
description | COVID-19 led to significant and dynamic shifts in power relations within and between governments, teaching us how governments make health policies and how health crises affect government. We focus on centralization and decentralization within and between governments: within government, meaning the extent to which the head of government controls policy; and between governments, meaning the extent to which the central government pre-empts or controls local and regional government. Political science literature suggests that shifting patterns of centralization and decentralization can be explained by leading politicians' efforts to gain credit for popular actions and outcomes and deflect blame for unpopular ones. We test this hypothesis in two ways: by coding the Health Systems Response Monitor's data on government responses, and through case studies of the governance of COVID-19 in Austria, Czechia and France. We find that credit and blame do substantially explain the timing and direction of changes in centralization and decentralization. In the first wave, spring 2020, heads of government centralized and raised their profile in order to gain credit for decisive action, but they subsequently tried to decentralize in order to avoid blame for repeated restrictions on life or surges of infection. These findings should shape advice on governance for pandemic response |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8913406 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2022 |
publisher | Published by Elsevier B.V. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-89134062022-03-11 Centralizing and decentralizing governance in the COVID-19 pandemic: The politics of credit and blame() Greer, Scott L. Rozenblum, Sarah Falkenbach, Michelle Löblová, Olga Jarman, Holly Williams, Noah Wismar, Matthias Health Policy Article COVID-19 led to significant and dynamic shifts in power relations within and between governments, teaching us how governments make health policies and how health crises affect government. We focus on centralization and decentralization within and between governments: within government, meaning the extent to which the head of government controls policy; and between governments, meaning the extent to which the central government pre-empts or controls local and regional government. Political science literature suggests that shifting patterns of centralization and decentralization can be explained by leading politicians' efforts to gain credit for popular actions and outcomes and deflect blame for unpopular ones. We test this hypothesis in two ways: by coding the Health Systems Response Monitor's data on government responses, and through case studies of the governance of COVID-19 in Austria, Czechia and France. We find that credit and blame do substantially explain the timing and direction of changes in centralization and decentralization. In the first wave, spring 2020, heads of government centralized and raised their profile in order to gain credit for decisive action, but they subsequently tried to decentralize in order to avoid blame for repeated restrictions on life or surges of infection. These findings should shape advice on governance for pandemic response Published by Elsevier B.V. 2022-05 2022-03-11 /pmc/articles/PMC8913406/ /pubmed/35331575 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.healthpol.2022.03.004 Text en © 2022 Published by Elsevier B.V. Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active. |
spellingShingle | Article Greer, Scott L. Rozenblum, Sarah Falkenbach, Michelle Löblová, Olga Jarman, Holly Williams, Noah Wismar, Matthias Centralizing and decentralizing governance in the COVID-19 pandemic: The politics of credit and blame() |
title | Centralizing and decentralizing governance in the COVID-19 pandemic: The politics of credit and blame() |
title_full | Centralizing and decentralizing governance in the COVID-19 pandemic: The politics of credit and blame() |
title_fullStr | Centralizing and decentralizing governance in the COVID-19 pandemic: The politics of credit and blame() |
title_full_unstemmed | Centralizing and decentralizing governance in the COVID-19 pandemic: The politics of credit and blame() |
title_short | Centralizing and decentralizing governance in the COVID-19 pandemic: The politics of credit and blame() |
title_sort | centralizing and decentralizing governance in the covid-19 pandemic: the politics of credit and blame() |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8913406/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35331575 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.healthpol.2022.03.004 |
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