State Capacity, Civil Society, and Policy Response to COVID-19
Open Access
Author:
Camp, Caroline
Area of Honors:
Political Science
Degree:
Bachelor of Arts
Document Type:
Thesis
Thesis Supervisors:
Anthony M Bertelli, Thesis Supervisor Gretchen G Casper, Thesis Honors Advisor
Keywords:
State Capacity Civil Society COVID-19 Policy
Abstract:
Why are some countries more successful than others at responding to the COVID-19 pandemic? Nearly every country in the world has felt the impacts of the pandemic on public health, politics, the economy, and virtually every other facet of daily life. While a massive disruption to the status quo seems to be a universal effect of the virus, the way in which governments around the world responded and the degrees to which their policies were successful has turned out to be anything but uniform. This thesis seeks to explain the variation in this policy success through the level of state capacity and civil society in a given country where both a high state capacity and robust civil society are theorized to be important for positive outcomes. Using a quanti-qualitive mixed-methods design, this thesis shows that state capacity and civil society are important for COVID-19 policy success. Given the ongoing nature of the COVID-19 pandemic and inevitability of future crises, this research has important implications for governments around the world.
