This is an introduction to a special issue dedicated to drawing lessons from the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. We introduce the various papers of the special issue, raise the questions we seek to answer in this special issue, and formulate an agenda for future research on the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Governments around the world responded at roughly the same time but in several different ways to the emerging threat of COVID-19 in early 2020. This article sets out the nature of the different strategies that emerged over the course of the pandemic, focussing on the policy tools deployed. Some of these efforts were successful in containing the coronavirus while others were not, in some cases due to poor initial choices and in others due to poor implementation of the chosen strategy. Although the initial understanding each government had of the nature of the disease was the same, different state capacities and different levels of preparedness and effective leadership can be seen to have resulted over time in the emergence of six distinct approaches to the pandemic which, once deployed, proved difficult, although not impossible, to change as the pandemic unfolded.

Despite the highest ranks on pandemic preparedness assessments European welfare states encounter great difficulty in responding effectively to the COVID-19 outbreak. In this article we compare the governance of COVID-19 response in 48 Eurasian countries and a selection of European and SARS (2003) exposed Asian countries during the first wave of the COVID-19 outbreak until 1 June 2020, using data from the COVID-19 Health System Response Monitor and the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker, recent scientific literature and policy documents.
Pandemic preparedness during the first wave of COVID-19 evolved from specialist infectious disease control to a broad governance of population mitigation, which in at least half of Eurasian countries lacked appropriate authority and capacity. In the directly operational response in Asian countries, preparedness encompasses a whole of government approach, an engaged and active community and private actors. Preparedness requires and reflects both vertical and horizontal coordination as well as policies that fit with the political economy of a country and region.

Crisis management requires health care managers to simultaneously innovate, i.e. to adjust – and to consolidate, i.e. to provide stability. COVID-19 was no exception in this respect. In this study, we ask to what extent multi-actor and multi-level health care networks stimulate or hinder balancing innovation and consolidation. We present the results of a qualitative case study, drawing upon 29 interviews with health care managers in one region in the Netherlands. Our analysis chronologically follows the crisis management response and differentiates between ‘the hammer’ phase (the ‘lockdown’) and the ‘dance’ phase (learning to live with the virus). We show that, especially in the hammer phase, formal networks can contribute to consolidation, yet innovation comes mostly from informal and personal networks. While the hammer phase should help organizations prepare to live and dance with the virus, we show that multi-actor and multi-level networks focus more on idiosyncratic organizational interests, although some of these are in fact productive. We conclude with recommendations for practice.

In the Netherlands, the first period of the fight against the corona virus, which lasted from March, 1 until December 1, 2020, can be seen as a unique experiment. During this period, the 25 chairs of the ‘safety regions’ (veiligheidsregio’s), who are simultaneously the major of an important municipality in their region, were authorized for the first time to issue the most essential measures to tackle a national health crisis, partly on the binding advice of the Dutch health minister. The chairs of the safety regions gathered in the so-called ‘safety convention’ (veiligheidsberaad), in which they aimed to nationally coordinate their respective local measures. In this paper, we argue that the involvement of the safety regions provided a structure in which all local office holders in their respective regions (both on the municipal and the safety region level) could co-operate in the nation-wide fight against the pandemic, while at the same time take into account the existing (cultural) differences between the 25 regions.

Shortly after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, a temporary law came into force enabling online deliberation and decision-making by decentralised governments. For the duration of the law, a committee evaluated its operation and implementation. The commission focused on legality, technology and security, and on political-administrative effects, since there were concerns about the consequences of the law in these three areas. This article shows that although no significant legal and technical problems arose, online deliberation did have an effect on the practices of deliberation and decision-making. Online deliberation during the pandemic was not good for local democracy, which was also due to society temporarily going into lock-down. At the same time, online deliberation also appears to have its advantages. In order to reap the benefits of digital deliberation, however, a permanent law that includes hybrid forms of deliberation and technical improvements to online conference systems is needed.

In this political philosophy article we contribute to the question whether the covid-measures of the state fundamentally change the relation between state and society. One the one hand, we seek to explain this from the perspective of different forms of power government applies. On the other hand, we seek to understand the nature of freedom and the legitimation to restrict freedom. We notice in contemporary administration a habitus that is extremely ambivalent. On the one side, freedom is perceived as not being restrained to do, say or think whatever one wants (negative freedom). On the other hand, we notice that this freedom is not entrusted to civilians (or civilians do not entrust it to themselves), but is materialized, in great detail, by government itself. Although a pandemic may legitimize extraordinary measures, we argue that, for the sake of the future of our political democracy, the state and its administration needs to develop more self-consciousness regarding the forms of power it applies. Also, it needs to be accountable to what extent it values freedom.

This paper takes a public administration lens to look at the relationship between scientific knowledge en policy making during the first phase of the COVID-19 pandemix in The Netherlands. Policy makers portrayed an eagerness for scientific knowledge to help them make ‘the right decisions’, and many scientist were just as eager to answer the call. However, there are many dilemmas involved in the relationship between policy making and scientific advice. How can de the relationship between science and policy best be organized? What scientific dicisplines and subsidsciplines should be involved? And what is the specific role of social sciences in policy advice?

In this article we present the results of research into quality control systems in Dutch mental health care (GGZ). So far, little is known about the efficacy of quality control systems in this sector. A mix of qualitative and quantitative research methods has been applied (interviews, focus groups, questionnaires and document analysis) to find out how these systems were applied in mental health care and how their use could be explained.
The findings show that the implementation of quality control systems was limited and highly selective. The system appears to be permanently failing, a fact recognized by most parties, yet mistrust prevents change. This confirms the assumption from institutional theory that some parts of organizations can have a symbolic rather than a real effect. In this case, it seems that the presence of quality control systems is valued over the actual improvement of quality.

Arthur Docters van Leeuwen was a legendary senior civil servant whose leadership in tough reform processes left many traces in Dutch public administration, even today. In my review of his 2020 memoires ‘Een Spoor van Vernieuwing’, I distil three broad lessons for change management and administrative reform, and administrative craftmanship in particular.