Explaining divergent National Responses to Covid-19: An Enhanced State Capacity Framework

Abstract

We develop a state capacity framework to account for different national responses to Covid-19. Our starting point is the influential idea that neoliberalism has a major role to play in state failure to control the pandemic. By implementing neoliberal reforms, states have ostensibly rendered themselves incapable of preventing or mitigating the viral outbreak. A focus on the British experience lends weight to this perspective. But when viewed in a comparative light, the picture is less straightforward. By comparing the British and Australian cases, we see a similar embrace of neoliberal reforms across the whole of government, yet with strikingly divergent outcomes. How can we account for this dramatic difference? To answer this question, we offer an enhanced state capacity framework to improve our understanding of diverse national responses to Covid-19. Our larger objective is to enrich the existing state capacity literature in two ways. First, we extend the existing state capacity framework by introducing a new category – salutary capacity – to encapsulate a state's ability to correct and counteract the course of a national health emergency. Second, we introduce the idea of political choice to emphasise the importance of agency in offsetting the institutional weaknesses associated with neoliberal reform.