How the world's liberal democracies diverged in their handling of COVID-19

As countries continue to grapple with the fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic, new crises such as the war in Ukraine and climate change are putting their resilience to the test. With many complex challenges brewing, it is time to answer the question: What makes a country crisis resilient?

Our most recent comparative analysis on the COVID-19 crisis resilience of 29 OECD and EU countries identifies the capabilities that have enabled well-organized democracies to weather the challenges of COVID-19.

South Korea is the only country surveyed that can be considered "well prepared" to deal with a health crisis like COVID-19. Ahead of the pandemic, the Korean Center for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) had identified high-priority infectious diseases and had stockpiled vital medical supplies at national centres. Following the 2015 MERS pandemic, health authorities in South Korea were evaluated and reviewed. The government then expanded its ability to generate and share data across different administrative levels, increasing its responsiveness.

Knowledge is rarely in short supply, but it is hard to transfer into effective policy decisions. In practice, this involves creatively resolving conflicting goals. During the pandemic, New Zealand was quickly able to provide real-time modelling and data analysis to contain the spread of COVID-19. Information derived from this real-time modelling was quickly communicated to the public, clarifying future scenarios and boosting public acceptance of official decisions. Denmark, New Zealand, the Netherlands and South Korea all regularly checked the effectiveness of their policies and adjusted them to the latest circumstances and research.

Only a few countries in our sample earn top marks for crisis communication. New Zealand’s government communication can be considered exemplary – at least during the pandemic’s early months. Jacinda Ardern's government familiarized the public with its four-tier alert system, and the “go hard, go early” approach. This helped create a sense of collective solidarity around the pandemic response while also emphasizing the importance of empathy.

As the pandemic progressed, countries had to evaluate, adapt, and coordinate crisis communication. In Finland, where public compliance with public health recommendations weakened over time, the government significantly increased the frequency with which it informed the public of measures and details. Like New Zealand, Finland was comparatively successful in controlling the spread of the virus in the first year thanks to a rapid, targeted, and restrictive containment strategy.

The pandemic showed the importance of combating the pandemic in a way that is coherent and sensitive to regional concerns. Here, New Zealand, South Korea, Belgium, Denmark, Greece, and Sweden were frontrunners. National coordination was largely smooth and took local concerns into account.

In Denmark the national health authority issued guidelines on the national coordination of hospital bed capacities. Moreover, a country-wide IT infrastructure was set up to monitor the distribution and redistribution of critical devices and protective gear in municipalities and regions. Regions have also cooperated with one another, admitting patients from places overburdened by coronavirus patients.

Denmark responded comparatively well to the new challenges. Whereas testing strategies elsewhere were in their early stages, by April 2020, it had already created a country-wide PCR-test infrastructure called Testcenter Danmark. Some other countries with updated crisis management strategies were able to evaluate their responses quickly, adjusting policies at short notice. Canada had evaluated its crisis management systems and significantly enhanced transparency, accountability, and citizen participation thanks to its well-developed Open Government platform. Finally, New Zealand showed great readiness and willingness to learn from other countries' experiences with pandemics. For example, the NZ Covid Tracer app was modelled on a version from Singapore.

Countries that top our resilience of governance ranking in the context of the COVID-19 crisis often show weaknesses in certain other crucial dimensions of their overall sustainable governance capacity. These weaknesses matter when confronting the question of longer term resilience.

For example, New Zealand tops the list with its go-hard, go-early policy, which compensated for gaps in the institutional preparedness of its healthcare system. However, the country's sustainable economic transformation has been slower. South Korea placed second with its effective COVID-19 contact-tracing system but faced challenges with a weakened social security system.

As we begin to understand the contours of what might become a challenging century, it is essential for democracies to reflect on key factors to increase their resilience to shocks. Change may hinge on closing the growing gap between democracies that invest heavily in forward-looking and participatory governance approaches and those that do not.