Do institutions matter in a crisis? Regime type and decisive responses to Covid-19

Governments around the world have been implementing measures to contain the COVID-19 pandemic and ease its economic fallout, and there has been extensive variation in the speed and extent to which they have introduced new policies. This article examines the role that regime type plays in determining the decisiveness of government policies to tackle the coronavirus pandemic and its spill over effects. We hypothesize that democratic regimes may be slower to introduce restrictions on civil liberties due to a "freedom commitment” and may be faster to provide economic protections due to a "welfare commitment”. We use event history analysis and data from the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker to examine whether less democratic regimes are more likely to implement restrictions faster, and spending programmes slower. Contrary to expectations, our findings suggest that more authoritarian regimes do not implement constraints more quickly or spending more slowly than more democratic regimes. The finding holds across various regime measures and model specifications. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Democratization is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)

Following the Science? Examining the Issuance of Stay-At-Home Orders Related to COVID-19 by U.S. Governors

Informed by the public health policymaking literature, this study's objective is to identify scientific, political, social, economic, and external factors related to U.S. governors' decisions to issue stay-at-home orders (SAHOs) in response to the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Public health experts advocate for social distancing to slow the spread of infectious diseases, but government mandates to social distance can impose substantial social and economic costs. This study uses event history analysis to investigate the issuance of COVID-19-related gubernatorial SAHOs during a 41-day period in the 50 U.S. states. The findings indicate that scientific, political, and economic factors were associated with the issuance of SAHOs, but that external considerations played the largest role, particularly those related to the timing of other governors' decisions. This study offers evidence about how some U.S. political leaders balance public health concerns against other considerations and, more broadly, how state governments address crisis-level issues.

Towards an analytical framework to analyse the evolution of innovation systems

The global manufacturing industry plummeted in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. To ensure the resilient and sustainable fostering of novel manufacturing innovations, the innovation system within which innovations are developed should be nurturing and supportive. Therefore, an analytical framework may be developed to guide innovators through the evaluation of manufacturing innovation systems. To develop the framework, the Design Science Research methodology is utilised, this paper presenting the theoretical framework development phase. The literature on the innovation system framework is utilised to develop a synthesis of innovation system tools to develop a CIMO-based EHA framework - an evolutionary guide to study a system's development over time to determine the influence of context, how and where transformation occurred, and the impact it had on the system's development. The framework also provides a method to define a system's outputs and socio-economic outcomes. © 2022 IEEE.

Open for Economic Activities during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Factors Related to State Reopening Policies in a Federal Policy Vacuum

What factors influence state governors to issue an executive order to reopen economic activities more or less quickly when removing the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions? Without comprehensive federal guidelines, state governors were faced with an administrative dilemma in devising mitigation policies that promoted safe public health measures while encouraging more business activity. Following the federal directive to reopen in April 2020, governors in all 50 states signed executive orders, but some waited longer than others. We argue that variation in the timing of the enactment of initial executive orders is influenced by political factors, financial resources factors, interstate factors, and problem severity of the public health incidence. Using an event history analysis, our Cox proportional hazard regression model suggests that states with unified Republican governments, more state funding obtained from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, and participation in regional collaboration resumed activities earlier compared to states with more neighbors that issued reopening executive orders and states with more per capita income. Results indicate that, in crisis situations, unified political partisanship, the receipt of federal funding, and coordination with other states facilitate rapid policy adoption.

The spatial diffusion mechanism of Health QR Code Policy in the context of COVID-19

As a public health emergency, the COVID-19 has led to a devastating consequence, such as casualties and property losses on a global scale. Since February 2020, in order to prevent the spread of the epidemic as well as to promote the resumption of work and production, governments at all levels across China successively decided to take action and introduce the Health QR (quick response) Code Policy. What is known is that the Health QR Code Policy has become an important means and practice for effectively preventing and controlling the disastrous epidemic in China up to now. Based on the Event History Analysis (EHA) of the diffusion time and influencing factors of 295 cities at and above the prefecture level in China, this paper explores the spatio-temporal process and mechanism of the rapid policy implementation in tackling the pandemic across China, what is worth paying attention to is that the policy was first initiated and adopted by a provincial government. The findings are as follows: (1) The cities with higher digitization and economic strength would have a faster response to adopt the Health QR Code Policy. (2) What is worth considering is that the "learning" and "competition" behaviors among governments of neighboring cities would speed up the diffusion of the Health QR Code Policy, while the vertical guidance pressure of provincial governments did not play a significant role. (3) During the COVID-19, policy entrepreneurs have played a significant role in public emergency and become a powerful force that can accelerate the diffusion of Health QR Code Policy. (4) The epidemic situation of each city would affect the transmission rate of the Health QR Code Policy. There is no doubt that the geographical distance from the epidemic hotspots would also affect the governments to adopt the Health QR Code Policy in a short period. This paper, by analyzing the diffusion motivations of the Health QR Code Policy during the COVID-19 pandemic, could provide a predominant summary of experience and policy suggestions for understanding the formulation of emergency policies as well as the diffusion mechanism in the context of public crisis. © 2022, Science Press. All rights reserved.

Merely Folklore? The Role of a Growth Mindset in the Taking and Timing of Entrepreneurial Actions

Why do some potential entrepreneurs promptly engage in entrepreneurial behavior while others do not pursue their entrepreneurial intentions or delay acting? This study investigated whether potential entrepreneurs' mindset shapes engaging in entrepreneurial behavior and the time until they do so. Over a 16-month period, holding more of a growth (vs. fixed) mindset positively predicted taking various entrepreneurial actions and doing so sooner. Interestingly, these effects vanished when individuals faced a less challenging context for entrepreneurship. Post-hoc exploratory analyses revealed that the COVID-19 pandemic magnified the impact of mindsets on entrepreneurial behavior. These findings pave the way for preliminary research on the viability of growth mindset interventions for fostering entrepreneurial behavior.

Postscript to “Survey Participation in the Time of Corona”

The analysis of "Survey Participation in the Time of Corona" is replicated by taking a more recent survey into account that was conducted one year later during the same period. The results clearly indicate that the temporary public shutdown in spring 2020 indeed boosted the panellists’ participation at the initial stage of the survey. © 2022Author(s).

Survey Participation in the Time of Corona: An Empirical Analysis of the Effect of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Survey Participation in a Swiss Panel Study

The singular effect of a public shutdown in spring 2020—as a result of non-pharmaceutical official orders and arrangements in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic—on survey participation is investigated. The analysis is focused on panellists born around 1997 and living in German-speaking cantons of Switzerland. Utilising the techniques and procedures of event history analysis, the paradata of the fieldwork period are analysed in a dynamic micro–macro design. Several competing time-varying effects on the panellists’ survey participation and changes in the pandemic progress are controlled for, in addition to time-constant covariates, such as their education and social origin. Indeed, it becomes obvious that the public shutdown during the first wave of the pandemic improved the target persons’ propensity for survey participation. © 2022Author(s).

Balancing finances, politics, and public health: international student enrollment and reopening plans at US higher education institutions amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Drawing from resource dependence theory, this study explores the extent to which international student enrollment related to institutional decisions to shift to in-person instructional strategies during the COVID-19 pandemic. We focus our study particularly on July 2020, a time during which tensions around international students' legal status in the US were especially high. Our results suggest that leaders at private not-for-profit institutions were significantly more likely to shift instructional strategies to include more in-person instruction, thus allowing more international students to enroll but also placing at risk the health of individuals on their campuses and in their local communities. A similar result was not found for public institutions. These results speak to the extent to which private institutions in the US have become financially dependent on international students' tuition and have clear implications for the financial futures of US higher education institutions. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10734-021-00768-7.

Assessment of Critical Diffusion Factors of Public–Private Partnership and Social Policy: Evidence from Mainland Prefecture-Level Cities in China

Cooperation between government and social capital is an important starting point in the supply-side reform of public services. It is also an effective practice in public governance innovation. Based on policy diffusion theory and event history analysis (EHA), this study analyzes panel data from 282 mainland prefecture-level cities in China from 2004–2020 to explore public–private partnerships’ critical diffusion factors. The study reveals that motivation factors, resource/obstacle factors, and external factors affect government and social capital cooperation policies to different extents. The main driving forces for local governments to adopt these policies are population size, level of economic development, government financial resources, the learning mechanism, and the imitation mechanism. This study proposes the following arguments: firstly, that the ultimate goal of policy innovation is to solve social contradictions and meet public demand;secondly, that economic resources can help to adopt policy innovation and proper diffusion;thirdly, that the public–private partnership (PPP) model has been continuously developed by using experience from other projects or cities through a learning mechanism;and finally, that policy publicity and public opinion expressed via the mainstream media are not only an inducement for policy innovation and diffusion, but also a powerful guarantee. The experience of local governments in China can help to verify whether the “positive factors” that are traditionally considered to be conducive to the cooperation between the government and social capital are effective, and to reveal the internal logic of the innovation diffusion of public policies of local governments in China from a more multidimensional perspective.