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

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