Premium
Covid‐19 and the Blunders of our Governments: Long‐run System Failings Aggravated by Political Choices
Author(s) -
Gaskell Jen,
Stoker Gerry,
Jennings Will,
Devine Daniel
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
the political quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.373
H-Index - 37
eISSN - 1467-923X
pISSN - 0032-3179
DOI - 10.1111/1467-923x.12894
Subject(s) - covid-19 , corporate governance , politics , context (archaeology) , government (linguistics) , strengths and weaknesses , political science , public administration , political economy , development economics , economics , law , medicine , finance , psychology , social psychology , linguistics , philosophy , disease , pathology , virology , outbreak , infectious disease (medical specialty) , paleontology , biology
More urgently than ever we need an answer to the question posed by the late Mick Moran in The Political Quarterly nearly two decades ago: ‘if government now invests huge resources in trying to be smart why does it often act so dumb?’. We reflect on this question in the context of governmental responses to Covid‐19 in four steps. First, we argue that blunders occur because of systemic weaknesses that stimulate poor policy choices. Second, we review and assess the performance of governments on Covid‐19 across a range of advanced democracies. Third, in the light of these comparisons we argue that the UK system of governance has proved itself vulnerable to failure at the time when its citizens most needed it. Finally, we outline an agenda of reform that seeks to rectify structural weaknesses of that governance capacity.