What Determines the Responses of Multi-Level States to Crises? A Set Theoretical Analysis of Evidence from the Covid-19 Pandemic

The institutionalist literature on public policy in federations cannot account for<br/>the variation in how multi-level states handled the Covid-19 pandemic. To explain these<br/>differences, this article presents a typology of policy responses and develops a framework<br/>that outlines their determinants. It argues that coordination occurs if governing actors are able<br/>and willing to coordinate their action against the functional pressure of the outbreak. This<br/>argument is examined with a fuzzy-set qualitative-comparative analysis (fsQCA) of policy<br/>responses in 13 OECD countries over four time-periods in 2020. The results show actors<br/>coordinated when they had access to shared-rule institutions and failed to coordinate because<br/>of ideological disagreements about public health measures. But results also show these<br/>conditions are insufficient for explaining outcomes and their effects are asymmetric. This<br/>informs our understanding of the responses of multi-level states to other complex problems<br/>like mass migration and extreme weather events.