Content uploaded by Benjamin Cashore
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Benjamin Cashore on Nov 18, 2021
Content may be subject to copyright.
1
Managing COVID-19 as a Super Wicked Problem:
Lessons from, and for, the Climate Crisis
******NOTE*****
Please cite the revised version of this paper which has now been published by Policy
Sciences under the title:
“Managing Pandemics as Super Wicked Problems:
Lessons from, and for, COVID-19 and the Climate Crisis”
Graeme Auld
Professor & Director, School of Public Policy and Administration
Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada: GraemeAuld@CUNET.CARLETON.CA
Steven Bernstein
Professor, Department of Political Science
University of Toronto: steven.bernstein@utoronto.ca
Benjamin Cashore*
Li Ka Shing Professor in Public Management, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy,
National University of Singapore: sppbwc@nus.edu.sg *Corresponding author:
Kelly Levin
Senior Associate, Global Climate Program,
World Resources Institute: KLevin@wri.org
Draft as of August 6, 2020, 6 pm: This is a significantly revised paper originally prepared for
delivery to the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy’s Breakfast Club seminar series, June
19, 2020.
ABSTRACT: COVID-19 has caused millions of infections, hundreds of thousands of deaths
and overwhelmed governmental health and financial capacities at multiples scales. Yet
debates persist on the most effective management techniques to mitigate and adapt to the
pandemic’s widespread effects. We contribute to these deliberations by treating COVID-19
as a “super wicked” problem - a term we originally coined to characterize climate change –
denoted by four key features: time is running out; no central authority; those causing the
problem also want to solve it; and irrational discounting of the future. We identified
diagnostic questions to guide policy officials in effectively managing this class of problems,
and offered path dependency as a means for doing so. Application of this framework to
COVID-19 reveals three management imperatives. First, in contrast to the climate crisis, the
fundamental challenge for domestic and global governance authorities is to create and nurture
governance institutions capable of maintaining durable policy objectives to produce swift
changes in policy settings consistent with emerging epidemiological evidence. Second,
similar to the climate crisis, building effective global institutions will mitigate the amount of
time, effort and resources governments will need to manage domestic responses. Third, as a
result, thermostatic institutions are needed at domestic and global levels, with significant
attention paid to their design.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: We thank for their comments on an earlier version that significantly advanced
our thinking: Lim Siong Guan, Kanti Prasad Bajpai, M. Ramesh, Alfred Wu, Leong Ching, Taha Hameduddin,
Jeremy Rayner, Bruce Wilson, Michael Howlett, Vinod Thomas, Altaf Virani, Henri Sader, Donna Krejci,
Nicolas Schmid and Sebastian Sewerin
2
Managing COVID-19 as a Super Wicked Problem:
Lessons from, and for, the Climate Crisis
Graeme Auld, Steven Bernstein, Benjamin Cashore and Kelly Levin
I. Introduction
COVID-19 has caused millions of infections, hundreds of thousands of deaths and
overwhelmed governmental health and financial capacities at multiples scales. Yet debates
persist on the most effective management techniques to mitigate and adapt to the pandemic’s
widespread effects. We contribute to these deliberations by treating COVID-19 as a “super
wicked” problem - a term we originally coined to characterize climate change – denoted by
four key features: time is running out; no central authority; those causing the problem also
want to solve it; and irrational discounting of the future.
1
We posited that anticipatory policy
design exercises for this class of problems required turning to dependency analysis with
which to answer relevant diagnostic questions. Application of our framework to COVID-19
reveals three critical management imperatives. First, in contrast to the climate crisis, the
fundamental challenge for domestic and global governance authorities is to create and nurture
governance institutions capable of maintaining durable policy objectives to facilitate swift
changes in policy settings consistent with emerging epidemiological evidence. Second,
similar to addressing climate change, strong global institutions that support domestic efforts
by providing and disseminating information, building trust, mobilizing resources, and
encouraging cooperation and equity will mitigate the amount of time, effort and resources
governments will need to manage domestic effects. Third, the preceding imperatives suggest
the need to design, or entrench, thermostatic institutions at domestic and global levels.
We proceed as follows. First, we compare COVID-19’s problem structure to climate change
measured against the four features of super wicked problems. Second, we outline our path
dependency framework designed to help ameliorate super wicked problems. Third, we review
the three management imperatives. We conclude by reflecting on ways in which the urgency
of government responses to the pandemic hold insights for triggering low carbon policy
pathways.
II. The four key features of super wicked problems
Almost half a century ago Rittel and Webber (1973) identified a distinct set of “wicked”
problems that stymied planners. They were characterized by ten features, including “no
stopping rule” (i.e., they lack a discrete solution or end point at which one can say the
problem is solved), “no immediate test” of a potential solution, “no opportunity to learn by
trial and error,” and little opportunity for a planner to be “wrong.” Rittel and Webber argued
that the then dominant planning approaches were inconsistent with managing wicked
problems. We argued that th characterization was so broad it could describe virtually every
contemporary policy problem.
2
Instead, our approach narrowed attention to four additional
features that characterized contemporary problems like climate change: time is running out;
no central authority; those seeking to end the problem are also causing it; policies irrationally
discount the future (Levin et al. 2012).
a. Time is running out
3
There is an overwhelming consensus among climate scientists that if global average
temperature increases more than 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, we risk
catastrophic impacts to a range of terrestrial, marine and aquatic ecosystems (IPCC 2018).
This feature also separates climate change from other important issues, such as efforts to
promote universal health care or gun control. While defeats on the latter are certainly
discouraging and can bring considerable human suffering, there is nothing stopping
supporters from trying again in 5 or 10 years. Climate change affords no such luxury.
Unquestionably, the nature of SARS-CoV-2 and the disease it causes (COVID-19) means
that time is critical. Unchecked, the spread of the virus follows an exponential growth curve.
Like addressing climate change, policy responses must be consistent with the biological and
epidemiological science. These factors dictate the time requirements, rather than electoral
cycles or policy windows. A lack of purposeful response risks significantly greater and
wider-reaching health and mortality impacts, and over very short time frames. Moreover, a
set of interventions that might work initially become more challenging and less effective with
the passage of time. For example, extensive social contact tracing early in the spread of the
virus can have positive effects, but is more difficult and costly if only implemented once
widespread infections have occurred given the sheer number of potential contacts that need to
be traced.
b. No central authority
Climate change governance is fragmented because of both the formally anarchic nature of the
international system and the nature of the problem: emissions anywhere contribute which
means global action is needed. Thus, despite the long history of international treaty making,
including the 2015 Paris Agreement, addressing climate change also requires multiple and
diverse responses at national and subnational levels and across economic sectors. Thus,
climate governance is multilevel and multiscaler (Bernstein and Hoffmann 2019) rather than
guided by a central authority.
As with climate change, there is no central global authority to govern pandemics. While a
World Health Organization (WHO) exists, it has no power to dictate global responses or
control national health agencies, policies or regulations. While the WHO performs many
important functions to monitor and promote health, it primarily acts as an advisory, scientific
and health promotion body. Its authority is limited largely to classifying global health threats
and supporting responses to essential health services in emergencies or in countries
requesting assistance. While there is debate on the degree of, and reasons for, some possible
misstep’s by the WHO on issues ranging from the speed of its initial response to cautious
communication on the science of transmission (e.g., the prevalence of symptomless spread),
what is beyond dispute is its weakness in the face of pressures of donor countries, most
notably US threats to suspend funding and its ultimate decision to withdraw membership
(Shear and McNeil Jr. 2020).
The COVID-19 crisis is also inherently fragmented because of its octopus-like tentacles –
causing physical and mental health challenges, associated economic disruption in efforts to
manage it, and, consequently, multiple ripple effects that can exacerbate existing social and
economic problems from domestic violence to inequality. The requisite governance
mechanisms are decentralized and uncoordinated because they require engaging rules and
regulations on travel, border control, policing, and access to health services. These features
4
create governance challenges in a world of sovereign states given the multiple, intersecting
policy domains that foment domestic conflicts even when a national central authority exists.
c. Those seeking to end the problem are also causing it
Unlike problems that have clear supporters and opponents, such as battles over gun control or
abortion in many countries, super wicked problems like climate change are characterized by
those seeking to solve the problem also contributing to it: i.e. we are battling our collective
selves. Virtually no one wants climate change, but the current political system, technologies,
availability of energy sources, and patterns of production and consumption among other
economic and cultural factors lead to us all individually and collectively contributing to the
problem.
Like climate change, society is not divided among interests who support or oppose the spread
of COVID-19. Yet we are all implicated in its spread and control. The virus has diffused so
rapidly because humans are social beings and the global economy is highly integrated (Gates
2020, Cohen et al. 2008). The interrelated economic, health and social dynamics of global
integration means measures needed to stop the disease’s spread have slowed international
trade and commerce, undermined important economic sectors from aviation to tourism, and
limited myriad educational opportunities and cultural interactions. Yet the benefits of
maintaining activities that cause the problem are so strong in the short and medium terms that
individuals may resist changing their behaviour, even if they know the risks of harm to
themselves and others.
At the same time there are enormous inequalities and ironies in suffering from inaction. In
the case of climate change, the poor and vulnerable generally contribute less but will suffer
more. In the case of COVID-19, evidence is mounting that individuals less able to social
distance because of limited resources are more likely to be infected (Aubrey and Neel 2020)
and those who work in low paying but necessary jobs more affected owing to less access to
health care and job losses owing to COVID-19 management (Abi-Habib and Yasir 2020).
d. Policies discount the future irrationally
Policy responses to super wicked problems suffer from discounting the future irrationally. To
be sure, the phenomenon of “hyperbolic discounting” - in which today’s preferences are
inconsistent with future economic optimality – has been studied by economists for decades.
Adherents to this conception, however, reinforce a normative position that it is only
“rational” to act to solve a particular policy challenge today if doing so results in fewer
economic costs at a later point. This approach, which typically relies on cost-benefit analysis
that converts future environmental and social outcomes into economic values, tends to foster
the very economic growth imperatives and patterns of production and consumption that are
largely responsible for the climate crisis (Hickel 2018).
Political factors also work to reinforce the tendency to “put off the future” and/or to
“disproportionately consider certain aspects of the present” (Dietsch 2020). For example,
contemporary political institutions heavily weight today’s policy interests, including in vogue
deliberative and multi-stakeholder decision-making procedures that champion “real time”
compromises among competing interests (Cashore et al. 2019). Relatedly, political electoral
cycles tend to emphasize short-term economic priorities (Lijphart 1990). Policy makers are
also prone to punting, and then reneging, on future commitments as the salience of short-term
5
costs confront the intended behavioural change. Hence, even when the dire consequences of
failing to address a problem like climate change are well communicated and understood,
these factors make future actions more difficult than those problems, such as COVID-19, that
present immediate impacts.
However, near-term biases are also present in the COVID-19 case. For example, politicians
in Italy (Pisano, Sadun, and Zanini 2020) and the United States reacted sceptically to the
crisis despite receiving advice to shut down cities and institute social distancing as early as
January (Lipton et al. 2020). While epidemiological uncertainty may have contributed to
divergent responses (Yong 2019, Landler and Castle 2020b), some choices also appeared to
reflect shorter-term economic calculations and interest-based compromises (Tankersley,
Haberman, and Rabin 2020, Judin 2020, Salas and Zafra 2020).
Another form of time inconsistency happens where, during a crisis, decision-makers place
disproportionate attention on a subset of impacts, owing to what some refer to as a “moral
panic” (Garland 2008).
3
This can generate an emphasis on short term challenges over its
long-term management, creating negative effects that could have been reasonably foreseen. A
classic example is “helicopter” parenting that emerged after a handful of child abduction
cases in the 1980s, which had long-term negative effects on a generation of children’s ability
to navigate the world on their own (Odenweller, Booth-Butterfield, and Weber 2014).
4
Near
term bias may help explain why the direct human health effects of COVID-19 management
in reducing the spread of the disease itself were incorporate systematically into policy design
(Quah 2020a), while less attention seemed to be placed on indirect human health effects, such
as domestic violence or lack of medical facilities available for other health challenges.
III. Diagnostic Questions for Super Wicked Problems
An emphasis on inductively generated solutions based on problem structure led us to identify
three diagnostic questions with which to help policy makers and society engage in
anticipatory policy design capable of overcoming one or more features of super wicked
problems (Table 1).
DQ1: What can be done to create immediate stickiness?
DQ2: What can be done to entrench support over time?
DQ3: What can be done to expand populations that support the policy over time?
Recent scholarship has highlighted a key limitation to the initial framework (Cashore and
Goyal 2019, Bernstein and Hoffmann 2019, Cashore et al. 2019). Many analyses did not fully
distinguish what their “successful” cases meant for ameliorating the super wicked problem at
hand (e.g. Meckling 2019, Pahle et al. 2018, Vandenbergh and Stern 2017). Responses to
these three questions could lead to “false positives” (i.e. treating as positive climate cases
likely to increase temperatures above 1.5/2 degrees Celsius). To avoid this risk, we now
formally identify a fourth diagnostic question.
DQ4: What can be done to ensure that lock-in, entrenchment, and expansion initiatives are in
line with desired outcomes?
6
Table 1. Diagnostic questions most relevant for specific super wicked features
Time is
running out
No central
authority
Those causing
wanting to solve
Irrational
discounting
DQ1: Immediate stickiness
✓
✓
DQ2: Entrenched over time
✓
✓
✓
DQ3: Expanding population
✓
✓
DQ4: Required outcome
✓
✓
IV. Path dependency analysis as a management tool
Backward looking research has provided overwhelming evidence of the ways in which path
dependency processes have impacted a range of contemporary policy challenges including
public health, the environment, pensions, jobs, and unemployment. A key finding is that
historically contingent “critical junctures” (Capoccia and Kelemen 2007, Lockwood et al.
2017) unleash multiple step causal processes that profoundly shape future politics,
institutional authority, social movements, political parties, and even political culture and
norms that define appropriate policies or processes (Hacker 2001, Cashore and Howlett
2007). Our framework turns these explanatory insights “forward” to help identify policy
triggers, consistent with what is now referred to as “anticipatory policy design” (Bali,
Capano, and Ramesh 2019). To do this we reviewed four distinct four distinct path dependent
(including Auld 2009, Pierson 2004, Mahoney 2000) to guide deliberations over the
diagnostic questions:
• Lock-in (most relevant to DQ1) emphasized immediate durability owing to such
factors as high fixed costs or institutional rules requiring super majorities to reverse;
• Increasing returns (most relevant to DQ2) assessed how benefits to citizens, interest
groups and society might change over time;
• Self-reinforcing (also most relevant to DQ2) considered whether the costs of reversal
would likely increase over time due to job skills or social practices, for instance,
becoming routinized and taken for granted; and
• Positive feedbacks (most relevant to DQ3) considered policies that gained support of
new populations, thus expanding coalitions or popular support, while reinforcing,
rather than undermining, support of the original populations.
Application of this “LISP” analysis also means avoiding policy designs that could eventually
undermine themselves and/or their original policy goals (Jacobs and Weaver 2015, Skogstad
2017, Sewerin, Béland, and Cashore 2020).
Table 2: Diagnostic questions and LISP analysis*
Lock-in
Increasing
returns
Self-
reinforcing
Positive
Feedback
DQ1: Immediate stickiness
✓
DQ2: Entrenched over time
✓
✓
✓
DQ3: Expanding population
✓
*NOTE: DQ4 rules out policy innovations consistent with DQs 1, 2 and 3 that are unlikely
to meet policy objectives. Source: Levin et al. (2012: 135)
7
a. Punctuating how, and what? Disentangling types of policy change and policy
elements
Applying LISP directs policy designers’ attention to two different processes through which
transformative change can occur. Drawing on Cashore and Howlett (2007) and Durrant and
Diehl (1989), Levin et al. (2012, 2009, 2007) targeted multiple steps that a particular policy
design might trigger before reaching a new “equilibrium”. They contrasted this to orthodox
“single step” “classic paradigmatic” models. This, in turn, required theoretical attention to
dominant logics of behaviour unique to each step, and the mechanisms for moving from one
step to the other (Bernstein and Cashore 2007). It also required guarding against the tendency
to assume a particular policy lever would be paradigmatic, when it was as likely to be short
lived (Table 3).
Source: Adapted from Cashore and Howlett (2007) and Durrant and Diehl (1989)
Most importantly, this approach also required distinguishing further just what element of
policy was being punctuated from those that remained in equilibrium (Cashore and Howlett
2007): ends-oriented elements differentiated by overarching goals, clearly defined objectives
and precise policy settings; and means-oriented elements distinguished by norm generated
intervention logics that bias the choice of policy tools, such as preferences for market
solutions over coercive regulations, the specific types of tools chosen, and the precise
calibrations of how policy tools are applied (Table 4).
Source: Adapted from Cashore and Howlett (2007: 536) and iterations since then (Cashore
2020)
8
Attention to the six policy elements, the numerous ways in which each can be filled, and the
role of critical junctures in fostering multiple casual step processes, distinguishes LISP
analysis from other pathways and scenario approaches that, reflecting different ontologies,
turn to technological solutions, generalizable theories of human behaviour, fixed preferences
and the search for universal design principles (Seto et al. 2016, Unruh 2000).
It is hard to overstate the importance of integrating path dependency analysis with the six
elements for fostering innovative thinking about policy design. Take for example, one of the
most widely studied “feed-in tariff” policy innovations that first emerged in Germany
(Schmid, Sewerin, and Schmidt 2019). Its origins can be traced to creative anticipatory
design that turned to the role of home owner contracts is classified as a tool, and 20 years of
legally binding commitments to future payments as calibrations that, together, caused
immediate lock-in (DQ1) owing to short-term economic and political costs of reversal. The
decision to choose policy settings that would pay homeowners for excess energy at the retail,
rather than the wholesale, rate (Schmid, Sewerin, and Schmidt 2019) created immediate
locked-in by shaping long-term preferences of home owners (DQ1). This led to multiple
casual LISP processes that, taken together, have resulted in entrenching (DQ2) and
expanding political support (DQ3) far beyond Germany to 132 countries all over the world
(DQ3) but has now diffused to 132 countries over the world (Meckling 2019). These multiple
step trajectories would in turn, help account for path dependent increases in the production of
solar panels, for example, and declining global prices that, some argue, were consistent with
helping limit warming to 1.5-2 degrees C future (DQ4)(Schmidt and Sewerin 2017, 2019).
Likewise, these events created unfolding steps that combined to reinforce public (Breetz,
Mildenberger, and Stokes 2018) and private sector (Böhringer et al. 2017) support (DQs2&3)
for policies and subsidies for low carbon technological innovations, which worked to
significantly shift political feasibility calculations from what was possible before the policies
were enacted.
5
V. Path DependencyAnalysis for the Super Wicked Problem of COVID-19
Similar to the climate crisis, COVID-19 policy designers must be careful to avoid narrowing
“lessons learned” to evidence from policy mix experiments from previous pandemics, but
instead to develop forward looking solutions consistent with problem structure. Doing so
leads us to identify three management imperatives.
a. Imperative 1: policy settings in service of durable policy objectives
First, in contrast to the climate crisis, the fundamental challenge for domestic and global
governance authorities is to create, and nurture, governance institutions capable of
maintaining path dependent policy objectives that allow for swift changes in policy settings
consistent with emerging and dynamic epidemiological evidence (Lagasse 2020). Largely
settled climate science means that policy designers can draw on path dependency targeted at
fostering durable punctuations of policy settings -- such as limiting industrial pollutants to
specific levels consistent with the 1.5/2 degrees C objectives (DQ4) -- would be reasonably
expected to create a net benefit consistent with achieving objectives (Duit 2007). However,
path dependent policy settings at the initial stages of pandemic management could lead to
lock-in behaviours as likely to exacerbate its spread as mitigate the disease. This means that
managing COVID-19 requires the combination of nimble policy settings in the service of
durable and deliberately arrived at policy objectives (Wee, Mueller, and Bubola 2020).
9
Operationalizing objectives
Formalizing objectives requires that governments consider three related matters. First, they
must explicitly identify what exactly will be affected owing to the “time is running out”
feature of super wicked problems. A general consensus exists that the focus ought to be
“saving human lives”. Yet, this is still too abstract for those cases in which decisions in
settings may reduce “lives lost” but increase “total years lost.” For example, if a particular
policy design, such as, say, devoting 90% of resources to directly managing COVID-19 led to
saving 100,000 lives, but also resulted in indirect impacts in 95,000 lives lost owing to fewer
resources for other diseases, such as drug dependency, a “lives” lost analysis would indicate
this was an appropriate allocation of resources. However, a “total years lost” calculation
could change these resource allocations since young people – who have many more years in
front of them than elderly populations – rarely die of COVID-19 (Dowd et al. 2020) while
they are the leading demographic of drug overdoses in many countries (Bramham 2020)
Second, policy makers and society must also consider how to incorporate other goals and
objectives that may be impacted by pandemic management. Others have noted that even
when prioritizing lives over defaulting to economic growth at all costs (Cashore and
Bernstein 2020), governments need to be careful to avoid policy responses that reduce
economic growth in ways that put the lives of vulnerable populations at risk. Hence,
governments will also want to consider other objectives not directly related to lives, but to
livelihoods such as the effects of policy responses like quarantines on increasing domestic
violence (Mak 2020) or childhood development (Allen 2020).
Third, managers should consider how to address the emergence of objectives that reinforce,
rather than resolve, super-wicked problem structure. For example, the “irrational
discounting” feature means that it is highly likely that managers will need to fend off
pressures for policy responses that favour short term economic considerations over long term
outcomes. This influence was starkly evident when the Texas Lieutenant governor expressed
his willingness to trade off his own death to save his grandchildren’s economic opportunities
(Wallace 2020). To be sure, the sharply opposing positions articulated by the governor of
New York (CBS News 2020) and the Premier of Ontario, Canada (Carter and Crawley 2020),
who both emphasized the importance of human lives qua human lives, illustrate how
governments can consciously decide to adjudicate some challenges as super-wicked.
Lessons for settings
Several management challenges emerge when objectives are not fully or clearly
operationalized. The first is that failure to make the difficult choices up front, means that they
will be influenced implicitly and explicitly, in debates and decisions about the most
appropriate settings. Take, for example, the head of the University of Oxford’s Evolutionary
Ecology of Infectious Disease group, Sunetra Gupta, who made waves when she contradicted
much of the prevailing epidemiological conclusions by positing that their modelling found
that restrictive quarantines were not needed (Sayers 2020, Clive Cookson 2020). However,
when justifying her prescriptions Gupta turned to assessing the effects of quarantines on
objectives aimed at minimizing inequality and vulnerability, “I think it is very dangerous to
talk about lockdown without recognising the enormous costs that it has on other vulnerable
sectors in the population….” (Sayers 2020: italics added). Although these are important
objectives managers should consider as ways to justify anticipatory policy design mixes,
10
including settings, they fall outside of Gupta’s debate with other scientists about the
epidemiology of the disease (DQ4).
Another lesson is the need to avoid developing settings early on that can be expected to have
their own path dependent impacts. For instance, initial protocols reflecting existing
epidemiology in the United States were based on the expectation that they might avoid a
massive outbreak. This led them to establish modest policy settings through the use of policy
tool guidelines and protocols. However, when scientific evidence emerged that policy
extended lock-down periods would be required for effective management, the United States
found it difficult to reverse course. Administratively changing policy settings took almost two
weeks to complete (DQs1&2), which some studies projected correlated with higher rates of
infections and lives lost than if they had acted more swiftly (Jewell and Jewell 2020, Rubin
2020). For these reasons, managers must also avoid initiating policy settings through
infrastructure projects which almost always have high sunk costs (DQ1). For instance,
Thailand invested in foot operated elevators when the epidemiology at the time suggested
that the virus spread easily via surfaces (Strait Times 2020b). When subsequent research
challenged these expectations (Fortin 2020), the sunk costs (DQ1) of an initial investment in
new machines and infrastructure made it difficult and impractical to reverse this response -
wasting resources that could have been used elsewhere (DQ2).
Recognition of these pitfalls carries important management implications for those countries
who developed protocols based on their experience with previous pandemics such as H1N1,
AIDS, SARS or MERS. These experiences help explain why governments such as South
Korea, Singapore and Hong Kong (Evans 2020, Quah 2020b, Capano et al. 2020) were fast
off the mark to initiate COVID-19 policy settings that included identifying and tracing
infected travellers, travel bans to infected areas, temperature screening for travellers and
contact tracing (Goddard 2020, Ha 2016). These policy settings were reinforced by
calibrations emphasizing strong compliance measures, including engaging thousands of
enforcement officers, and high levels of fines and incarceration for non-compliance. These
calibrations in turn, were supported by those governments who had a history of strong
centralized authority combined with societal communitarian values (DQ3)
The challenge for governments and managers initiating these policy settings is what to do
when scientific knowledge would emerge subsequently that change these settings’ expected
effects. For example, knowledge about pre-symptomatic and asymptomatic carriers of
COVID-19 began to emerge in February. This meant that policy settings establishing
temperature screening at airports based on “lessons learned” from previous pandemics might,
in the absence of other measures, lead to increasing the spread of the disease by creating a
false sense of security. Whereas managers cannot avoid these they can take steps to avoid
settings becoming path dependent. This requires understanding, and avoiding, micro level
sources of path dependency – such as when settings are routinized through “standing
operating procedure” or through narrowing training of employees to implement a specific
setting such as contract tracing or taking temperatures (DQ2&3). If, as studies suggest
(Roberts 2020), infection waves are likely, then policy objectives need to allow for “classic
incremental” changes to settings governing lock down or physical distancing. Hence,
managers would do well to target settings, all else being equal, to those activities that are
more easily ramped up and ramped down, such as whether employees are required to work
from home or the office.
11
Nowhere are these dilemmas more acute than ongoing and still unsettled debates about
whether settings should focus on “herd” or “flattening the curve” approaches, which
distinguished early efforts by the UK and ongoing strategy in Sweden from a range of other
countries is Europe and Southeast Asia. The management challenge was not that Swedish
scientists were wrong, or that they might have acted differently with subsequent
epidemiological data (The Guardian 2020). Rather, it was the stickiness of settings that
caused problems. In contrast, South Korea began to loosen settings reopening its economy in
early May using the same tools, but quickly found it relaxed social distancing measures too
quickly.Within days following outbreaks traced back to the behaviour of single individual,
local governments reacted quickly to order all bars and nightclubs shut down indefinitely
(Sang-Hun 2020).
b. Imperative #2: design or strengthen meaningful global institutions
Reflecting the second feature of super wicked problems, policy mangers – including those
charged with managing domestic responses would do well to look toward improving global
coordination. Strong well-resourced global institutions with high levels of legitimacy and
trust can support domestic efforts by providing and disseminating information, mobilizing
resources, and encouraging cooperation and coordination. They also mitigate the amount of
time, effort and resources needed to manage domestic responses. The challenges facing
international institutions in this regard is that that multilateralism is under threat from several
directions. In these cases, a key management imperative would be to identify “easy to pull”
policy levers – often found within calibrations elements - that might trigger progressive
incremental global co-operation trajectories, rather than putting all their eggs on “single shot”
international agreements that may fail or become faux-paradigmatic.
A similar logic applies to federal or multi-level arrangements where a lack of coherent
leadership, guidance and coordination undermines effectiveness when sub-national or local
governments develop contractor strategies. This fragmentation of authority has generated
well-publicized conflicts and policy dilemmas internationally and within states (e.g.,
measures to ban the export of medical supplies and protective gear or control vaccine
development) and concerns that such zero-sum thinking and resulting competitive behaviour
will undermining recovery efforts (Evans 2020, Goodman et al. 2020). While decentralized
authority may be appropriate in some respects – local health authorities are likely better
placed to choose measures fit to community needs, especially since outbreaks have strong
local dimensions – the global nature of pandemics and need to address the problem
everywhere to prevent ongoing transmissions means a lack of cooperation and coordination
can frustrate even initially successful local efforts. In short, local successes can only flourish
when accompanied by global processes that disseminate scientific knowledge and coordinate
policies on movements of people and goods across borders.
c. Imperative #3: designing for durable objectives
To address the first two imperatives, managers must help design for governance institutions
at multiple scales capable of maintaining durable objectives even in the face of overwhelming
and sometimes contradictory body of scientific evidence (Brueck and Wyman 2020).
Thermostatic institutions
12
One concrete recommendation relevant specifically to COVID-19 that flows from this
imperative is for policy managers to give theoretical and conceptual attention to uncovering
and designing what Cashore and Howlett (2007) label “thermostatic institutions.” These
institutions are characterized by their ability to maintain stability of pre-established policy
objectives in the face of changing external conditions. For example, in the case of US forest
biodiversity policy, from which Cashore and Howlett (2007) derived the concept, the
objective of maintaining species viability was treated as analogous to maintaining house
temperature (DQs1&2). The policy design included a tool equivalent to a house furnace - in
which would be either “on” or “off” depending on outside changes. Following scientific
evidence that logging was threatening an old growth dependent species, policies were
triggered - akin to a house’s thermostatic – that resulted in massive changes in policy settings
governing logging operations.
The lesson is not simply to apply path dependency to policy mix deliberations, but to the
governance arenas that produce them (DQs1,2&3). This requires that managers build these
institutions based on which of the six policy elements they want to remain durable, and which
will be required to adapt. There are several examples of such institutions in domestic arenas.
Most prominently, many countries have created thermostatic institutions to govern monetary
policy. Independent central banks consciously shield officials from short-term political
pressures so that they can freely adjust settings (e.g., interest rates and money supply) to
maintain durable objectives such as inflation targets, exchange rates, or other policy goals
like full employment (Keefer and Stasavage 2003). Just how much autonomy must be
granted to maintain the legitimacy of the institution will need to be carefully weighed and
embedded into the design of any thermostatic institution (Dietsch 2020).
Often owing to path dependent choices from experience with previous pandemics,
government officials in some countries have already created thermostatic institutions relevant
for COVID-19 (Quah 2020a, Hille and White 2020). For instance, owing to the experience
with SARS, Singapore immediately convened an “interagency” committee with a designated
command structure to create a quick and efficient response to COVID-19 (Woo 2020, Quah
2020b). Similarly, South Korea had set in place path dependent Korea Centers for Disease
Control following MERS which increased epidemiological capacity and autonomy. The
thermostatic institution was also designed to trigger, following scientific knowledge of a new
outbreak, a pre-established government task force of economists, sociologists and infectious
disease experts who would provide advice and public guidelines on social distancing. These
mechanisms allowed relatively quick adaptations of tools and calibrations, such as using
public facilities to house infected patients with mild symptoms to support quarantining while
reducing stress on hospitals, as well as drive-through and walk through testing (Moon 2020).
In contrast, the United States’ designs seemed much less thermostatic. Not only do the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration and the
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases all play a role, but “on the fly” decisions
were made to create a more coordinated command structure (Cancryn, Forgey, and Diamond
2020). Some posit that subsequent delays in changes to policy settings in response to new
epidemiology affected lives lost (Jewell and Jewell 2020). While our framework positions,
rather than applies, sophisticated empirical analysis on these questions, we do note that
epidemiological experts often turned to advocacy and even op-ed writing, as a way to convey
scientific findings as the Trump administration simultaneously engaged in critiques of the
scientists on whose knowledge a thermostatic institution would need to draw (Strait Times
2020a). Similarly, debates about whether to treat COVID-19 as a “super wicked” problem, or
13
as simply a temporary impediment to economic growth goals seems to have played a role in
undermining the effectives of, and compliance with, COVID-related policy settings. This
confusion was exacerbated early on when Trump struck another committee designed to “re-
open the economy,” made up primarily of business leaders, though the exact operation of that
task force has been murky (White House 2020).
Building thermostatic institutions
It is one thing to identify existing cases of thermostatic institutions, it is entirely another
matter to identify solutions for building them. By their very nature, the path dependent
antecedents that lead to thermostatic institutions are not always easily steered or produced.
For example, environmental movements of the late 1960s and 1970s were largely responsible
for the United States biodiversity conservation thermostat. Likewise the prominence of
communitarian values in Southeast Asia in contrast to the emphasis on individual liberties the
United States, reflect historical and social and cultural differences that will strongly influence
not only whether thermostatic institutions might already exist, but also specific micro-level
management decisions for creating them.
6
Our point here is that mangers would do well to
identify meso and micro level policy levers for either reinforcing, or creating, thermostatic
institutions.
Knowledge generation
As an illustration, we focus on the potential of knowledge generation for building legitimate
and authoritative thermostatic institutions (DQ2). One way this can occur is through
committees of experts. Let us take, for example, the UK’s creation of the “Scientific
Advisory Group for Emergencies” (SAGE). While laudable, it faced early criticism for
secrecy and its initial approach to settings aimed at fostering “herd immunity”. Arguably this
approach may have been better understood, and SAGE’s authority more entrenched, if the
public had a better idea as to what objectives were guiding its policies in an uncertain
epidemiological world. It remained unclear on what science SAGE based that advice or
whether it – or the government – was guided by clear goals and objectives as opposed to
attempts to balance economic and health considerations (Landler and Castle 2020a). This
may explain why, when the science seemed to indicate that more lives would be saved by
“flattening the curve”, public distrust increased, serving to undermine its authority
In contrast, South Korea’s central government learned from criticism over its lack of
transparency in the initial stage of the MERS outbreak, which led to panic, confusion and
reduced trust among citizens who were trying to understand the risk of becoming infected
(Ha 2016). In response, South Korea initiated several reforms including ensuring that tests
would be quickly approved for any future pandemic(Moon). This “trust surplus” seems to
help explain high degrees of public trust following COVID-19.
7
What is important for
managers designing forward is that early efforts to be transparent and involving citizens in
such details as tracking, appear to generate self-reinforcing (DQ2) and expanding support
(DQ3) for policies that appeared to be working to protect public health.
Another potentially promising venue is to assess whether, and how, governments might
incorporate, or nurture, “citizen scientists” to foster legitimacy. Managers might utilize “open
science”, for example, to draw in outside parties
8
, giving them reason to invest time and
energy into activities that support the original policy objectives (DQs 2&3). This could draw
on the approach offered by the journal Nature which, on March 3, 2020, launched “Outbreak
14
Science Rapid PREreview” as a proxy for the peer-review process to help decision-makers
and researchers assess the importance and quality of rapidly emerging studies before they
work through the normal peer-review process. These approaches seem to show promise in
bolstering the credibility and robustness of the research outputs, while also ensuring new
information continues to be shared rapidly (Johansson and Saderi 2020).
Public data in this context can feed social practices that amplify the accessibility, salience of
information, and expectations. Put differently, the raw data generated by governments, and
the requirement to make these public, might be expected to reinforce a daily routine of
reporting practices (DQ2) that keep an outbreak on the policy agenda, even when decision-
makers may want to deflect the public’s attention away from the super-wicked problem at
hand to other issues that seem less challenging or politically expedient (Rogers, Shear, and
Kanno-Youngs 2020). While more research and theory building needs to occur, preliminary
evidence indicates that respondents who viewed governments as acting responsibly in the face
of the crisis (Bol et al. 2020) were better able to develop policy settings changes without
undermining their trust and authority.
Designers of thermostatic institutions must also recognize that behavioural adjustments are
costlier (DQ2) in some contexts than others. Rapid decisions to open or close particular
businesses, or open elementary schools as opposed to keeping them online, will have major
implications in most countries for millions of people, affect people of different socio-
economic status or in different types of work unequally, and affect not only the ability of
those directly affected to work but also have secondary effects on both employment and
health risks (e.g., keeping schools open enables parents of young children to more easily
work but could increase health risks to teachers, parents, and their families if outbreaks
occur). Paying attention to these costs, and being transparent about them, may help guide
managers to lifting restrictions that are projected to be less likely to erode broader public
support (Kennedy 2020). Institutional arrangements for income support, rent relief, child
care, and health services, among many other considerations, often from higher levels of
support, will also need to weigh heavily in such calculations.
Thermostats for global governance
There is also no question, especially given the second management imperative, that greater
care and attention must be placed on developing thermostatic institutions for COVID-19
management at the global level. In this regard open science may be as, or more useful, at the
global level as well – especially given the lack of central authority. It is telling that on
January 30, 2020, the WHO and World Bank’s Global Preparedness Monitoring Board
released a statement calling for the “prompt and unrestricted sharing of coronavirus
specimens and clinical samples is essential to advancing this research and development, early
detection and the global public health response…” (GBMP 2020). Groups of countries
similarly called for open data and research in the days and weeks that followed (Government
of Canada 2020). Even publishers had already responded in kind owing to their own path
dependent experiences with the 2016 Zika virus outbreak (Wellcome 2016).
Managers attempting to build global thermostatic institutions could also consider assessing
the potential of drawing on, and encouraging knowledge expansion from non-health experts.
For instance, experts in Artificial Intelligence have been enlisted, through open competitions,
in the hopes that machine learning technologies can assist in mining the vast quantities of
data to inform management strategies. Similarly, the White House and partners developed a
15
machine-readable dataset of 57,000 scholarly articles on COVID-19 that they made publicly
available and called on the global research community to examine the data using advances in
artificial intelligence and natural language processing to ascertain new and innovative
strategies in the fight against covid-19 (Kaggle 2020). In another case, a team of material
scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory applied natural language processing
techniques to compile and facilitate analysis of 61,000 research papers related to outbreaks –
8,000 of which are directly on COVID-19 (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory 2020).
VI. Conclusion
Our analysis illustrates the value of taking problem structure seriously. It also shows how
path dependency analysis, guided by our diagnostic questions, can help policy makers devise
policy mixes that tackle problems like climate change and COVID-19 that have features of
super wicked problems. Several insights generated demand further consideration by
researchers and policy practitioners. First, analysis must be undertaken that permits, rather
than undermines, abstract theorization (Healy 2017). Super wicked problems like COVID-19
require developing an approach consistent with the complexity of the problems it seeks to
address (Stirling 2010) if meaningful responses are to be developed. Second, managing
COVID-19 requires this kind of nuance given that its problem structure requires constant
changes to settings that account for new knowledge. The broader implications for path
dependency scholarship is to avoid the tendency to make generalizations across an entire
policy domain (Jacobs and Weaver 2015, Skogstad 2017). Instead, scholars must identify
which policy elements are path dependent and which may, for the same reasons, be subject to
constant change (Howlett and Cashore 2009). For these reasons current efforts to think about
COVID-19 as a “critical juncture” (Green 2020) must be careful to specify the elements they
project to be path dependent, from those likely to change, or revert back to the pre-crisis
equilibrium.
The good news for pandemic management is that the very deliberative processes for deciding
what objectives to pursue, and how to do so, can occur well before the next inevitable
pandemic. The good news for the accelerating climate crisis is that one possible outcome of
COVID-19 is that the entire world’s population has, over the last six months, individually
and collectively battled the same enemy (Evans 2020). We may therefore not only find
meaning out of our shared tribulations but also shared purpose (DQ2) in developing
institutions at global, regional and domestic scales capable of addressing (DQ4) our most
super wicked of problems
VII. Bibliography
Abi-Habib, Maria, and Sameer Yasir. 2020. "For India’s Laborers, Coronavirus Lockdown Is
an Order to Starve: Despite leaders’ decrees on staying home, laborers who live hand-
to-mouth say they have no choice but to keep hitting the streets." New York Times,
March 30. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/30/world/asia/coronavirus-india-
lockdown.html.
Allen, Lorraine. 2020. "He Has 17,000 Bottles of Hand Sanitizer and Nowhere to Sell
Them." New York Times, May 18.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/18/parenting/coronavirus-spain-children-
trauma.html.
Andrade, Gabriel. 2020. "Medical conspiracy theories: cognitive science and implications for
ethics." Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy:1-14.
16
Aubrey, Allison, and Joe Neel. 2020. "CDC Hospital Data Point To Racial Disparity In
COVID-19 Cases." National Public Radio, April 8.
https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/04/08/830030932/cdc-
hospital-data-point-to-racial-disparity-in-covid-19-cases.
Auld, Graeme. 2009. "Reversal of Fortune: How Early Choices Can Alter the Logic of
Market-based Authority." Ph.D. Doctoral Dissertation, School of Forestry and
Environmental Studies, Yale University.
Bali, Azad Singh, Giliberto Capano, and M Ramesh. 2019. Anticipating and designing for
policy effectiveness. Taylor & Francis.
Bernstein, Steven, and Benjamin Cashore. 2007. "Can Non-State Global Governance be
Legitimate? An analytical framework." Regulation and Governance 1 (August):347-
371. doi: 10.1111/j.1748-5991.2007.00021.x.
Bernstein, Steven, and Matthew Hoffmann. 2019. "Climate Politics, Metaphors and the
Fractal Carbon Trap." Nature Climate Change 9 (December):919–925.
Block, Melissa. 2020. "Meet The Team Behind The Coronavirus Tracker Watched By
Millions." National Public Radio, April 13, All Things Considered.
https://www.npr.org/2020/04/13/833073670/mapping-covid-19-millions-rely-on-
online-tracker-of-cases-worldwide.
Böhringer, Christoph, Alexander Cuntz, Dietmar Harhoff, and Emmanuel Asane-Otoo. 2017.
"The impact of the German feed-in tariff scheme on innovation: Evidence based on
patent filings in renewable energy technologies." Energy Economics 67:545-553.
Boin, Arjen, Allan McConnell, and Paul 't Hart. 2020. "Leading in a crisis: strategic crisis
leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic." The Mandarin.com.au, March 30.
Bol, Damien, Marco Giani, André Blais, and Peter John Loewen. 2020. "The effect of
COVID‐19 lockdowns on political support: Some good news for democracy?"
European Journal of Political Research.
Bramham, Daphne. 2020. "170 died from overdoses as B.C. records its worst month ever."
The Vancouver Sun, June 12. https://vancouversun.com/news/daphne-bramham-170-
died-from-overdoses-as-b-c-records-its-worst-month-ever.
Breetz, Hanna, Matto Mildenberger, and Leah Stokes. 2018. "The political logics of clean
energy transitions." Business and Politics 20 (4):492-522.
Brueck, ilary, and Sarah Wyman. 2020. "Sweden's former health chief says the country's
coronavirus strategy 'hasn't been the smartest' and it should've spent at least a month
locked down." Business insider, March 24. https://www.businessinsider.com/sweden-
coronavirus-strategy-hasnt-been-the-smartest-2020-5.
Budryk, Zack. 2020. "Spain to launch universal basic income 'soon'." The Hill, April 7.
https://thehill.com/policy/international/europe/491308-spain-to-launch-universal-
basic-income-soon?amp.
Cancryn, Adam, Quint Forgey, and Dan Diamond. 2020. "After fumbled messaging, Trump
gets a coronavirus czar by another name: facing the coronavirus threat a month ago,
Trump said “we have it totally under control.” This week, under fire, he changed
course." Politico, April 11, 1995. https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/27/white-
house-coronavirus-response-debbie-birx-117893.
Capano, Giliberto, Michael Howlett, Darryl SL Jarvis, M Ramesh, and Nihit Goyal. 2020.
"Mobilizing Policy (In) Capacity to Fight COVID-19: Understanding Variations in
State Responses." Policy and Society:1-24.
Capoccia, Giovanni, and R. Daniel Kelemen. 2007. "The Study of Critical Junctures: Theory,
Narrative, and Counterfactuals in Historical Institutionalism." World Politics 59
(3):341-369.
17
Carter, Adam, and Mike Crawley. 2020. "COVID-19 could kill 3,000 to 15,000 people in
Ontario, provincial modelling shows." CBC May 21.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-covid-projections-1.5519575.
Cashore, Benjamin. 2020. A Note on Cashore and Howlett’s policy taxonomy: origins and
evolution. Research Gate
Cashore, Benjamin, and Steven Bernstein. 2020. "Bringing the Environment Back In:
Overcoming the Tragedy of the Diffusion of the Commons Metaphor." Revised
version of paper presented to the Ostrom workshop, April 2018, Bloomington,
Indiana, Jan 25.
Cashore, Benjamin, Steven Bernstein, David Humphreys, Ingrid Visseren-Hamakers, and
Katharine Rietig. 2019. "Designing stakeholder learning dialogues for effective global
governance." Policy and Society 38 (1):118-147.
Cashore, Benjamin, and Nihit Goyal. 2019. Anticipating negative feedback and avoiding
premature equilibria in the low carbon path dependent processes. WRI Expert
Perspectives Policy Brief.
Cashore, Benjamin, and Michael Howlett. 2007. "Punctuating which equilibrium?
Understanding thermostatic policy dynamics in Pacific Northwest forestry."
American Journal of Political Science 51 (3):532-551.
CBS News. 2020. "Cuomo on coronavirus: We won't put elderly at risk to boost the
economy." CBS News, March 24. https://www.cbsnews.com/video/coronavirus-new-
york-governor-cuomo-protecting-elderly-health-economy/.
Clive Cookson. 2020. "Coronavirus may have infected half of UK population — Oxford
study
New epidemiological model shows urgent need for large-scale testing." Financial Times,
May 21. https://www.ft.com/content/5ff6469a-6dd8-11ea-89df-41bea055720b.
Cohen, Myron S, Nick Hellmann, Jay A Levy, Kevin DeCock, and Joep Lange. 2008. "The
spread, treatment, and prevention of HIV-1: evolution of a global pandemic." The
Journal of clinical investigation 118 (4):1244-1254.
Dietsch, Peter. 2020. "Independent Agencies, Distribution, and Legitimacy: The Case of
Central Banks." American Political Science Review 114 (2):591-595.
Dowd, Jennifer Beam, Liliana Andriano, David M Brazel, Valentina Rotondi, Per Block,
Xuejie Ding, Yan Liu, and Melinda C Mills. 2020. "Demographic science aids in
understanding the spread and fatality rates of COVID-19." Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences 117 (18):9696-9698.
Duit, A. 2007. "Path dependency and institutional change: The case of industrial emission
control in sweden." Public Administration 85 (4):1097-1118.
Durrant, Robert F., and Paul F. Diehl. 1989. "Agendas, alternatives, and public policy:
Lessons from the U.S. foreign policy arena." Journal of Public Policy 9:179-205.
Elkington, John. 2020. "Turning black swans green." GreenBiz.com, March 30.
https://www.greenbiz.com/article/turning-black-swans-green.
Evans, Margaret. 2020. "Against a common foe, nations around the world go their own way
on pandemic: Co-operation and co-ordination on COVID-19 response remains a work
in progress." The Globe and Mail, April 10.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/countries-not-working-together-to-fight-covid-
1.5528718.
Fortin, Jacey. 2020. "Surfaces Are ‘Not the Main Way’ Coronavirus Spreads, C.D.C. Says."
New York Times, March 22, Updated May 27.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/22/health/cdc-coronavirus-touching-
surfaces.html?fbclid=IwAR3POYX5dJxiAykjvzGZUWUYta5GhyMDvho4A9gv0cw
1k66Y2fkFoVwKbWw.
18
Garland, David. 2008. "On the concept of moral panic." Crime, Media, Culture 4 (1):9-30.
Gates, Bill. 2020. "Responding to Covid-19—A Once-in-a-Century Pandemic?" New
England Journal of Medicine.
GBMP. 2020. Statement from the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board on the Outbreak of
2019-novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV). Global Preparedness Monitoring Board , Co-
convended by the World Health Organization and the World Bank Group.
Goddard, Taegan. 2020. "Virus Spread Undetected In U.S. for Weeks." Politica Wire, April
23.
Goodman, Peter S., Katie Thomas, Sui-Lee Wee, and Jeffrey Gettleman. 2020. "A New Front
for Nationalism, The Global Battle Against a Virus: Every country needs the same
lifesaving tools. But a zero-sum mind-set among world leaders is jeopardizing access
for all." New York Times, April 10.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/10/business/coronavirus-vaccine-nationalism.html.
Government of Canada. 2020. Call for Open Access to COVID-19 Publications. edited by
Chief Science Advisors or equivalents representing the following countries:, Australia
India Republic of Korea, Brazil Italy Singapore, Canada Japan
Spain, European Commission New Zealand United Kingdom, France Portugal
United States of America and Germany. Ottawa, Canada: Government of
Canada.
Green, Duncan. 2020. "Covid-19 as a Critical Juncture." COVID-19 as a Critical Juncture - A
Paper and Open Webinar, The United Kingdom, April 3.
Ha, Kyoo-Man. 2016. "A lesson learned from the MERS outbreak in South Korea in 2015."
Journal of Hospital Infection 92 (3):232-234.
Hacker, Jacob. 2001. The Divided Welfare State. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Haelg, Leonore, Sebastian Sewerin, and Tobias S Schmidt. 2019. "The role of actors in the
policy design process: introducing design coalitions to explain policy output." Policy
Sciences:1-39.
Healy, Kieran. 2017. "Fuck nuance." Sociological Theory 35 (2):118-127.
Hickel, Jason. 2018. "The Nobel prize for climate catastrophe." Foreign Policy.
Hille, Kathrin, and Edward White. 2020. "Containing coronavirus: lessons from Asia."
Financial Times, March 16.
Howlett, Michael, and Benjamin Cashore. 2009. "The Dependent Variable Problem in the
Study of Policy Change: Understanding Policy Change as a Methodological
Problem." Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis 11 (1):29-42. doi:
10.1080/13876980802648144.
IPCC. 2018. "Special Report: Global warming of 1.5 °C." In. Geneva, Switzerland: World
Meteorological Organization: United Nations.
Jacobs, Alan M, and R Kent Weaver. 2015. "When policies undo themselves: Self‐
undermining feedback as a source of policy change." Governance 28 (4):441-457.
Jewell, Britta L., and Nicholas P. Jewell. 2020. "The Huge Cost of Waiting to Contain the
Pandemic: As the numbers show, the timing of social distancing can have an
enormous impact on death tolls." New York Times, April 14.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/14/opinion/covid-social-distancing.html?smid=tw-
share.
Johansson, Michael A, and Daniela Saderi. 2020. "Open peer-review platform for COVID-19
preprints." Natur 579 (7797):29-29.
Jones, Ryon. 2020. "Flattening the COVID curve: Waterloo students help create COVID-
tracking platform used by more than 300,000 people in first week." Waterloo Stories,
March 23. https://uwaterloo.ca/stories/flattening-covid-curve.
19
Judin, Nick. 2020. "Governor Orders Limited Gatherings, Declares Most Businesses
'Essential,' Supersedes Local Safety Efforts." Jackson Free Press, March 26.
https://m.jacksonfreepress.com/news/2020/mar/24/gov-tate-reeves-orders-limited-
gatherings-today-ex/.
Kaggle. 2020. COVID-19 Open Research Dataset Challenge (CORD-19)
An AI challenge with AI2, CZI, MSR, Georgetown, NIH & The White House
.
Keefer, Philip, and David Stasavage. 2003. "The Limits of Delegation: Veto Players, Central
Bank Independence, and the Credibility of Monetary Policy." American Political
Science Review 97 (3):407-423.
Kennedy, Merrit. 2020. "California Governor Outlines How The State Will Decide To Open
Again." National Public Radio, April 14. https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-
live-updates/2020/04/14/834434343/california-governor-outlines-how-the-state-will-
decide-to-open-again.
Lagasse, Jeff. 2020. "COVID-19 impact on hospitals worse than previously estimated:
Factors such as how many patients would need ICU treatment, average length of stay
and fatality risk are straining hospital resources." Health Care Finance, June 1.
https://www.healthcarefinancenews.com/news/covid-19-impact-hospitals-worse-
previously-estimated?fbclid=IwAR1Brg4c3RGUz_oaypoJS5kbAhlGa-
ImwSAlZ0SQHY-edpDtrkTo9FucnKE#node-
140145:~:text=Modeling%20estimates%20based%20on%20Chinese%20data,had%2
0been%20predicted.%20By%20April%209.
Landler, Mark, and Stephen Castle. 2020a. "The Secretive Group Guiding the U.K. on
Coronavirus." New York Times, April 23 Updated May.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/23/world/europe/uk-coronavirus-sage-secret.html.
Landler, Mark, and Stephen Castle. 2020b. "Trump Considers Reopening Economy, Over
Health Experts’ Objections." New York Times, April 23.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/23/world/europe/uk-coronavirus-sage-secret.html.
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. 2020. Unexpected Scientific Insights into COVID-
19 From AI Machine Learning Tool. SciTechdaily.
Levin, Kelly, Benjamin Cashore, Steven Bernstein, and Graeme Auld. 2007. "Playing it
Forward: Path Dependency, Progressive Incrementalism, and the “Super Wicked”
Problem of Global Climate Change." International Studies Association Convention,
Chicago, Il, February 28th – March 3.
Levin, Kelly, Benjamin Cashore, Steven Bernstein, and Graeme Auld. 2009. "Playing it
forward: path dependency, progressive incrementalism, and the "super wicked"
problem of global climate change." Climate Change: Global risks, challenges and
decisions Congress, Copenhagen, March 10-12.
Levin, Kelly, Benjamin Cashore, Steven Bernstein, and Graeme Auld. 2012. "Overcoming
the tragedy of super wicked problems : constraining our future selves to ameliorate
global climate change." Policy Sciences 45:123--152. doi: 10.1007/s11077-012-
9151-0.
Lijphart, Arend. 1990. "The political consequences of electoral laws, 1945–85." American
political science review 84 (2):481-496.
Lipton, Eric, David E. Sanger, Maggie Haberman, Michael D. Shear, Mark Mazzetti, and
Julian E. Barnes. 2020. "He Could Have Seen What Was Coming: Behind Trump’s
Failure on the Virus: An examination reveals the president was warned about the
potential for a pandemic but that internal divisions, lack of planning and his faith in
his own instincts led to a halting response." New York Times, April 11 (updated April
20
14). https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/11/us/politics/coronavirus-trump-
response.html.
Lockwood, Matthew, Caroline Kuzemko, Catherine Mitchell, and Richard Hoggett. 2017.
"Historical institutionalism and the politics of sustainable energy transitions: A
research agenda." Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space 35 (2):312-333.
Mahoney, James. 2000. "Path Dependence in Historical Sociology." Theory and Society
29:507-48.
Mak, Sophie. 2020. "China’s Hidden Epidemic: Domestic Violence
The surge of domestic violence in China amid COVID-19 lockdowns points to the
ineffectiveness of its Anti-Domestic Violence Law." The Diplomat, January 24.
https://thediplomat.com/2020/04/chinas-hidden-epidemic-domestic-violence/.
McConnell, Allan, and Alastair Stark, eds. 2020. Global Crisis: Policy Responses to COVID-
19, Special issue call for papers: European Journal of Public Policy.
Meckling, Jonas. 2019. "A New Path for US Climate Politics: Choosing Policies That
Mobilize Business for Decarbonization." The ANNALS of the American Academy of
Political and Social Science 685 (1):82-95.
Moon, M Jae. 2020. "Fighting Against COVID‐19 with Agility, Transparency, and
Participation: Wicked Policy Problems and New Governance Challenges." Public
Administration Review.
Odenweller, Kelly G, Melanie Booth-Butterfield, and Keith Weber. 2014. "Investigating
helicopter parenting, family environments, and relational outcomes for millennials."
Communication Studies 65 (4):407-425.
Osaka, Shannon. 2020. "Why don’t we treat climate change like an infectious disease?" The
Grist, March 16. https://grist.org/climate/why-dont-we-treat-climate-change-like-an-
infectious-disease/.
Pahle, Michael, Dallas Burtraw, Christian Flachsland, Nina Kelsey, Eric Biber, Jonas
Meckling, Ottmaro Edenhofer, and John Zysman. 2018. "Sequencing to ratchet up
climate policy stringency." Nature Climate Change 8 (10):861-867.
Peters, B Guy. 2017. "What is so wicked about wicked problems? A conceptual analysis and
a research program." Policy and Society 36 (3):385-396.
Pierson, Paul. 2004. Politics in time : history, institutions, and social analysis. Princeton, N.J.
; Oxford: Princeton University Press.
Pisano, Gary P, Raffaella Sadun, and Michele Zanini. 2020. "Lessons from Italy's Response
to Coronavirus."
Quah, Danny. 2020a. "Politics, Science, and Reason: What COVID-19 Reveals About Public
Policy Across Nations." Medium.com.
Quah, Danny. 2020b. "Singapore’s policy response to COVID-19." In Mitigating the COVID
Economic Crisis: Act Fast and Do Whatever, edited by R. Baldwin and Weder di
Mauro, 103-111.
Rittel, Horst WJ, and Melvin M Webber. 1973. "Dilemmas in a general theory of planning."
Policy sciences 4 (2):155-169.
Roberts, Siobhan. 2020. "This Is the Future of the Pandemic
Covid-19 isn’t going away soon. Two recent studies mapped out the possible shapes of its
trajectory." New York Times, May 8.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/08/health/coronavirus-pandemic-curve-
scenarios.html?searchResultPosition=1.
Rogers, Katie, Michael D. Shear, and Zolan Kanno-Youngs. 2020. "Trump Plans to Suspend
Immigration to U.S." New York Times, April 20 (Updated April 21).
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/20/us/politics/trump-immigration.html.
21
Rubin, Jennifer. 2020. "Trump’s inaction has a staggering toll." New York Times, April 16.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/15/trumps-inaction-has-
staggering-toll/.
Sahin, Oz, and Russell Richards, eds. 2020. Life in the Time of a Pandemic: Social,
Economic, Health and Environmental Impacts of COVID-19—Systems Approach
Study. Special issue call for papers: European Journal of Public Policy.
Salas, Javier, and Mariano Zafra. 2020. "An analysis of three Covid-19 outbreaks: how they
happened and how they can be avoided." El Pais, June 18.
https://english.elpais.com/spanish_news/2020-06-17/an-analysis-of-three-covid-19-
outbreaks-how-they-happened-and-how-they-can-be-avoided.html.
Sang-Hun, Choe. 2020. "As South Korea Eases Limits, Virus Cluster Prompts Seoul to Close
Bars." New York Times, May 9.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/09/world/asia/coronavirus-south-korea-second-
wave.html.
Sayers, Freddie. 2020. "Sunetra Gupta: Covid-19 is on the way out
The author of the Oxford model defends her view that the virus has passed through the UK's
population." Unherd, May 21. https://unherd.com/2020/05/oxford-doubles-down-
sunetra-gupta-
interview/?tl_inbound=1&tl_groups%5b0%5d=18743&tl_period_type=3.
Schmid, Nicolas, Sebastian Sewerin, and Tobias S Schmidt. 2019. "Explaining Advocacy
Coalition Change with Policy Feedback." Policy Studies Journal.
Schmidt, Tobias S, and Sebastian Sewerin. 2017. "Technology as a driver of climate and
energy politics." Nature Energy 2 (6):1-3.
Schmidt, Tobias S, and Sebastian Sewerin. 2019. "Measuring the temporal dynamics of
policy mixes–An empirical analysis of renewable energy policy mixes’ balance and
design features in nine countries." Research Policy 48 (10):103557.
Seto, Karen C, Steven J Davis, Ronald B Mitchell, Eleanor C Stokes, Gregory Unruh, and
Diana Ürge-Vorsatz. 2016. "Carbon lock-in: types, causes, and policy implications."
Annual Review of Environment and Resources 41:425-452.
Sewerin, Sebastian, Daniel Béland, and Benjamin Cashore, eds. 2020. Designing Policy for
the Long Term: Agency, Policy Feedback and Policy Change, Special Issue: Policy
Sciences.
Shear, Michael D., and Donald G. McNeil Jr. 2020. "Criticized for Pandemic Response,
Trump Tries Shifting Blame to the W.H.O." New York Times, April 14.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/14/us/politics/coronavirus-trump-who-
funding.html.
Skogstad, Grace. 2017. "Policy feedback and self-reinforcing and self-undermining processes
in EU biofuels policy." Journal of European Public Policy 24 (1):21-41.
Stirling, Andy. 2010. "Keep it complex." Nature 468:1029-1031.
Strait Times. 2020a. "Coronavirus: US scientist group says it has solution to virus." Strait
Times, April. https://www.straitstimes.com/world/united-states/us-scientist-group-
says-it-has-solution-to-virus.
Strait Times. 2020b. "Thailand mall's foot-operated lifts win praise for measures to prevent
coronavirus." Strait Times, April. https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/se-asia/thailand-
malls-foot-operated-lifts-wins-praise-for-measures-to-prevent-coronavirus.
Tankersley, Jim, Maggie Haberman, and Roni Caryn Rabin. 2020. "Trump Considers
Reopening Economy, Over Health Experts’ Objections." New York Times, March 23.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/23/business/trump-coronavirus-economy.html.
The Guardian. 2020. "We should have done more, admits architect of Sweden's Covid-19
strategy: Anders Tegnell says there was ‘potential for improvement’ in country’s
22
strategy to fight pandemic." The Guardian.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/03/architect-of-sweden-coronavirus-
strategy-admits-too-many-died-anders-tegnell.
Thomas, Vinod. 2020. "Limiting our carbon footprint in a post COVID-19 world — we
shouldn't go back to business as usual." The Hill, April 7.
https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/489273-limiting-our-carbon-
footprint-in-a-post-covid-19-world-we-shouldnt.
U of T News. 2020. "U of T students create dashboard to monitor COVID-19 case trajectory
in Canada." U of T News, March 23. https://www.utoronto.ca/news/u-t-students-
create-dashboard-monitor-covid-19-case-trajectory-canada.
Unruh, G. C. 2000. "Understanding carbon lock-in." Energy Policy 28 (12):817-830.
Vandenbergh, Michael P, and Paul C Stern. 2017. "The Role of Individual and Household
Behavior in Decarbonization." Envtl. L. Rep. News & Analysis 47:10941.
Wallace, Jeremy. 2020. "Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick elaborates on controversial Fox News
comments about coronavirus." Houston Chronicle, March 25.
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/article/dan-patrick-texas-coronavirus-
comments-fox-news-15156794.php.
Wee, Sui-Lee, Benjamin Mueller, and Emma Bubola. 2020. "From China to Germany, the
World Learns to Live With the Coronavirus." New York Times, June 24.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/24/world/europe/countries-reopening-
coronavirus.html.
Wellcome. 2016. Statement on data sharing in public health emergencies.
White House. 2020. Guidelines: opening up America again. Washington, DC: White house
Woo, JJ. 2020. "Policy capacity and Singapore’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic."
Policy and Society:1-18.
Yong, Ed. 2019. "The U.K.’s Coronavirus ‘Herd Immunity’ Debacle: The country is not
aiming for 60 percent of the populace to get COVID-19, but you’d be forgiven for
thinking so based on how badly the actual plan has been explained." The Atlantic
Monthly, March 16. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/03/coronavirus-
pandemic-herd-immunity-uk-boris-johnson/608065/.
Endnotes
1
Characterizations of COVID-19 as “super wicked” have already appeared in the media (Osaka 2020), scholarly opinion
pieces (Elkington 2020, Boin, McConnell, and Hart 2020) as well as special issues of journals (McConnell and Stark 2020,
Sahin and Richards 2020)
2
See also Peters (2017).
3
Psychologists refer this phenomenon as “proportionality bias” (Andrade 2020)
4
In contrast, other scholars note the potential positive effects the COVID crisis might have in potentially improving other
environmental (Thomas 2020) and social challenges (Budryk 2020)
5
Haelg et al’s (2019) analysis of the Swiss renewable energy feed-in tariff found that the presence of “design coalitions” can
also cause “immediate stickiness” (DQ1).
6
We thank Lim Siong Guan for this point.
7
An April 2020 survey found that 74.4% of respondents agreed that the government was being transparent and 60% indicated
they trusted government officials (ibid).
8
For example, Students from the University of Toronto create online tracking tool (U of T News 2020). A team from John
Hopkins creates a dashboard (Block 2020). Waterloo students make a tool that is used by 300,000 people in the first week
online (Jones 2020).
