RAP | Call for short papers I: Governmental responses to COVID-19 pandemic

By Alketa Peci, Brazilian School of Public and Business Administration, Getulio Vargas Foundation, Brazil; Claudia N. Avellaneda, O’Neill School of Public & Environmental Affairs Indiana University, USA and Kohei Suzuki, Institute of Public Administration, Leiden University, the Netherlands

The new novel coronavirus (COVID-19) posed an unprecedent challenge to governments worldwide. Indeed, within three months, the virus traveled in a borderless world, and challenged public and private health systems in more than 196 countries, leading the World Health Organization to declare a global pandemic.

As a highly contagious virus, the COVID-19 pandemic has led to skyrocketing numbers of death and contaminations, imposing simultaneous massive public health campaign such as social isolation. The differences in virus outbreak and victims are rather striking among countries and territories. Furthermore, government approaches to tackle the pandemic and their effectiveness seem to significantly vary. Although we do not know the answer yet and this may change in the future, such differences demand deep reflections.

As the virus spread worldwide, it poses additional challenges not just to health systems, but also to education (children on distance learning), vulnerable segment, public security, mental health, and economic depression. The three months of COVID-19 have also indicated that governments react with a variety of responses in terms of degree of innovativeness, flexibility, bottom-up or bottomdown approach.

This call for short papers aims to gather reflexive, timely and relevant contributions of different governmental approaches to COVID-19 pandemic. We acknowledge that the timing of the call may pose challenges to the rigor and relevance of academic contributions – as we all are learning along the way. However, we believe that the field of public administration as applied field should respond to this type of emergency more quickly and offer more vigorous insights.

We invite short papers (up to 4000 words) to explore how different countries have responded to the emergency, by focusing on concrete strategies, actions and timing of responses taken by specific governments.

We are interested in creating a knowledge base of comparison of government approach and measures against Coronavirus from public administration and public policy point of view, by exploring those issues include but not limited to:

• Why do some countries handle the virus outbreak more effectively?
• Cross-national, cross-regional, within-regional comparison, etc.
• Analysis of specific policies (e.g. massive versus focused testing) that have failed or succeed in different contexts.
• Political and administrative leadership in handling the COVID-19 outbreak.
• Consequences of the pandemic for vulnerable communities. q Impacts of pandemic on education, public security or economic institutions.
• The role of specific public institutions in handling the emergency.
• Good local or community level practices to mitigate the spread of COVID-19.
• Coordination and cooperation mechanisms between international, national and subnational governments in responding and handling the health crisis.

The deadline for paper submissions is June 1, 2020. Papers will be reviewed by the editorial team. For any questions, please contact:

• Alketa Peci (alketa.peci@fgv.br)
• Claudia Avellaneda (cavellan@indiana.edu) or
• Kohei Suzuki (k.suzuki@fgga.leidenuniv.nl)

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• RAP | Ações e Estratégias COVID-19
• Call for short papers I: Governmental responses to COVID-19 pandemic
• Chamada Especial de Artigos II: A resposta da administração pública brasileira aos desafios da pandemia
• Articles on Management and Public Health Policies