Good Public Governance in a Global Pandemic

The International Institute of Administrative Sciences (IIAS) have published a special report titled “Good Public Governance in a Global Pandemic”. The intention was that this report  is  useful  in  helping  leaders  and  governments  understand  better  what  has  worked  and  why  and  facilitate  the  drawing  of  immediate  lessons  for  their handling of COVID-19 and lessons for future pandemics.

The International Institute of Administrative Sciences, as a learned society for  Public  Administration,  dealing  with  real  societal  problems,  wanted  to  do  what it could to help as the national governments of the world sought to protect human life from the ravages of the coronavirus crisis.  The perspective of this report is therefore a practical one. This is not a report prepared by academic ‘spectators’  contemplating  out  of  ‘pure’  curiosity  what  is  happening,  but  a  report of academics and practitioners that is intended to support the work of all those public leaders and public administrators bearing a responsibility for the public governance of action in response to the pandemic.

In order to compile this report on the public governance of the COVID-19 pandemic, the IIAS and its entities’ network was mobilized. A large number of academics, scholars, and practitioners of public administration from across the world collaborated to establish what was happening in the different countries and to evaluate the consequences of the measures taken at the different phases of the pandemic. The idea was to study the variety of situations and the diversity of responses.

Tom Christensen and Per Lægreid have contributed with the chapter on how The Norwegian Government responded to the COVID-19 Pandemic.The main lesson learned from the Norwegian case is that, despite a lack of preparedness in some respects, the government managed to control the pandemic rather quickly and effectively by adopting a suppression strategy based on a collaborative and pragmatic decision-making style, successful communication with the public, a lot of resources, a high level of citizens’ trust in government, professional hospital services and a low population density.

You can find the full report HERE.