Content uploaded by William B. Heller
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by William B. Heller on Sep 03, 2023
Content may be subject to copyright.
36
Chapter 2. The Institutional
Underpinnings of Policy Making in the Face
of the COVID-19 Pandemic in Europe
By William B. Heller, Ezgi Muftuoglu, and Dina Rosenberg
Abstract
Chinese authorities identified the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19 in January
2020, yet already by early March, there were over 4000 cases in Europe (Spiteri et al., 2020) and
governments were seeing the disease as a serious threat. The novelty of the disease, along with
the array of possible manifestations—with symptoms ranging from nothing at all to severe
pneumonia and death—meant that scientific understanding and advice regarding best practices
were sometimes ambiguous and often changing as the caseload increased and data and
understanding improved. Under such circumstances, it is to be expected that policy responses
should differ across countries, as policymakers struggle to evaluate advice in the face of difficult
tradeoffs. In hindsight, however, approaching two years since Europe saw its first recognized
case, the early and perhaps understandable differences in governmental responses to the
pandemic look surprisingly persistent even as the available advice from national and
international health authorities has converged and stabilized. This consistency in the range as
well as relative efficacy of responses over time suggests systematic underpinnings to policy
making in times of crisis just as for policy making under more normal circumstances. To gain
In Government Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic - Between a Rock and a Hard Place,
ed. Ogla Shvetsova. New York: Palgrave Macmillan (Forthcoming).
37
insight into the drivers of policy making in the face of the COVID-19 threat, we examine breadth
and severity of initial governmental measures to contain the disease from January through April
2020 in Denmark, Finland, Italy, and Spain. Initial analysis suggests that many of the usual
suspects in institutional analysis—system type, electoral rules, and state territorial structure—
provide little leverage on either government policy response or health outcomes. We focus here
on coalition dynamics and in particular the interdependencies between ministries (and ministers’
parties; Alexiadou, 2016) in pandemic policy making.
Keywords: political institutions, coalition dynamics, covid-19, Europe
2.1 Introduction
As of this writing (July 2022), the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has already
taken the lives of over 6.6 million people (World Health Organization [WHO]). Although it
appears to be subsiding or at least less deadly, the pandemic has pushed governments all over the
world to design and implement timely anti-covid measures in the face of uncertainty about many
aspects of the disease, its spread, and its treatment. And despite the fact that all governments
were dealing with the same strain of the disease for the first eight months of the pandemic, until
the more deadly “alpha” strain was found in the UK in September 2020 (Walker et al., 2021),
government responses and outcomes varied dramatically across countries.
The first confirmed COVID-19 cases in Europe were reported in France on 24 January
2020 (WHO, 2020). Germany and Finland reported cases of their own only a few days later, and
data from the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Research Center indicate that European Union
38
countries with confirmed cases increased from six
1
at the beginning of February to fully sixteen
2
by the end of the month. By 19 March, when Lithuania saw its first confirmed case, the COVID-
19 pandemic had a foothold in every country in the EU. Notwithstanding the rapid spread of the
disease and the fact that all governments had access to the same information with respect to how
best to respond to it, country responses differed widely in both approach and efficacy: for
instance, on 1 March 2020 excess mortality from all causes was negative in every country in the
European Union; by the end of that month that statistic was up to nearly 140 percent in Spain and
90 percent in Italy, followed by Belgium and the Netherlands at nearly 45 percent and 0 in
Denmark and Slovakia (Our World in Data, 2022).
The reasons for differences in how the COVID-19 pandemic affects countries assuredly
are many, ranging from country- and time- dependent factors such as tourism rates, population
density, the status-quo allocation of health-care resources (Cox, 2014), or the ideological
complexion of government to such elements of institutional design as territorial organization
(Shvetsova et al., 2020; 2021; Adeel et al., 2020), veto players (Tsebelis, 1995), electoral rules
(e.g., Iversen & Soskice, 2006), and party systems (Budge & McDonald, 2007; Iversen &
Soskice, 2006).
1
Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Sweden.
2
Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece,
Ireland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Romania, Spain, and Sweden.
39
In this paper we propose a more nuanced explanation for why European countries
significantly differ in their responses to the same disease by focusing on the partisan structure of
the cabinet, specifically, number of parties and their competitive context. As we see it, the
number of parties in cabinet and their competitive relationship (Pavlović & Xefteris, 2020)—i.e.,
whether and how they face off at the ballot box—should be an important consideration in
analyzing government responses to crisis like the current pandemic. The conventional common-
pool resources logic would suggest that the quality of government action should decline with the
number of parties in government, as parties either try to shift blame or claim credit for policy.
We build on Pavlović and Xefgteris (2020) in arguing that the common-pool logic works
differently in politics than economics in that it should be influenced by interparty electoral
competition: parties that don’t compete for the same voters have no direct electoral reason to
compete on policy either.
The core of our argument is that the less parties compete for what Pavlović and Xefgteris
(2020) term “impressionable” voters the less they need worry about claiming credit or shifting
blame for policy benefits or costs that fall on voters. By this token, in a two-party majority
coalition, each of the parties will in general be representing a broader swathe of constituents than
the average party in a majority coalition with three or more members. Consequently, whereas
small parties with limited constituencies are relatively free to focus on their target voters rather
than seeking to attract more marginal voters, larger parties do not have that luxury and will focus
on “impressionable” voters. One tactic for stealing away other parties’ voters (and retaining
one’s own) involves taking credit for successes and assigning blame for failures. Armed with the
“winner-takes-all” logic inherent in two-party competition versus the more cooperative
“consociational” logic of multiparty competition (Lijphart, 1969), one could argue that
40
competition between two players raises the electoral stakes and impedes decision-making. Thus,
we argue that the effect of the number of parties within ruling coalitions upon policies is
nonlinear: both single-party governments and multi-party coalitions, all else equal, are expected
to outperform two-party coalitions. We then take the argument a step farther, observing that to
the extent that the ministerial structure of cabinet government parses out distinct, non-
overlapping jurisdictions (Shepsle, 1979) parties should have incentives to produce the best
policies they can because there is no one else to share the blame or take the credit.
3
We explore the viability of our argument by applying it to four cases from the European
Union—Denmark, Finland, Spain, and Italy—chosen for their multiparty legislatures and mix of
cabinet types (number of parties, majority/minority). All four countries we examine share some
basic similarities. They are constitutionally unitary parliamentary regimes with decentralized
healthcare systems and they all have multiparty legislatures with nine or more parties and an
effective number of parliamentary parties greater than four. They differ widely in the type of
cabinet and number of parties in the coalition, from one in Denmark’s minority cabinet to two
major parties within Italian and Spanish coalition governments to five in Finland’s majority
coalition, as well as the relative sizes and legislative weights of cabinet parties.
The chapter is organized as follows. In the next section we briefly describe the logic of
coalition policy making under the classic model of coalition formation and explain why the
3
This part of our argument depends on the maintained hypothesis that politicians (and
ministers in particular) believe some non-trivial number of voters is able to connect policies to
ministries and their ministers.
41
model in its original form fails to explain policy making during crises. In the following section
we present our main theoretical argument, where we introduce two important concepts—partisan
competitive relationships and the compartmentalization of policy responsibilities—and
demonstrate how this addition to the model enriches its explanatory power. After that we provide
empirical evidence by tracing anti-covid policy making in the selected four country cases. At the
end we discuss our results and conclude.
2.2 The Classic Model of Coalition Policy Making, and Why It Does Not Work in the
Times of Crisis
The conventional wisdom holds that ministers make and implement policy, and while
their counterparts in other ministries might raise a public eyebrow from time to time (in
multiparty governments, that is; in single-party government disagreements should be worked out
in camera under the watchful eye of the party leader and according to established party decision-
making procedure; cf. Bagehot, 1873) the empirical regularity of collective cabinet responsibility
whereby ministers support their counterparts generally obtains. Public disagreements should be
minor or primarily for show (see Fortunato, 2019; Sargazazu & Klüver, 2017) once the
boundaries of coalition policy and policy making have been set, whether that is achieved through
detailed coalition agreements (Bäck et al., 2017) or the careful allocation of ministries and
ministerial jurisdictions (Dewan & Hortala-Vallve, 2011; Laver & Shepsle, 1996).
The portfolio-allocation model of coalition formation (Laver & Shepsle, 1996) essentially
equates coalition formation and coalition policy positioning. The naïve model can be criticized
for setting up a massive, multiparty logroll, which in turn opens the door to the common-pool
problems discussed above. The naïve model, moreover, runs up against the question of whether
coalition parties would be willing to give free rein to their partners in light of the possibility that
42
unexpected issues might arise to make ministerial autonomy at best unpalatable (Riker, 1980).
One straightforward guarantee that coalition partners won’t go too far out of line is the de
facto veto every coalition partner has over coalition survival and any concomitant policy making
(Tsebelis, 1995). Other common steps to ensure that unforeseen policy concerns don’t hand too
much power to coalition partners include coalition agreements (Bäck et al., 2017), carving out
central coordinating authority for the finance minister (Alexiadou & Gunaydin, 2019), or
portfolio design and allocation (e.g., Dewan & Hortala-Vallve, 2011; Heller, 2001). Whatever
the method, however, the effect is to constrain ministerial autonomy.
Ministers acting under constraints might be desirable in the normal course of day-to-day
policy making. In a crisis that demands rapid and perhaps even bold action, however, those same
constraints could be crippling. At the same time, a crisis should usefully undermine these
constraints. First, the emergence of new issues and concerns leaves the usual jurisdictional lines
blurred and faded, rendering moot existing divisions of authority so that the correspondence
between coalition formation and coalition policy that follows from the Laver-Shepsle (1996)
portfolio allocation model no longer holds. And second, the subsequent intracoalition
negotiations to define crisis-specific jurisdictions and jurisdictional authorities should be seeking
to build a decision-making structure specific to the problem at hand. It might take some time to
get the details right, possibly leading to a delayed policy response vis-à-vis single-party
governments, but once they do settle on a division of authority multiparty coalitions then should
function well.
2.3 Theoretical Argument
In the normal give-and-take of everyday politics, as discussed above, government policy
makers rule over their jurisdictions within the constraints of coalition agreements (Bäck et al.,
43
2017), party hierarchies, or strategic considerations. There should in equilibrium be no real
behavioral differences between majority and minority or multiparty and single-party
governments, as every government decision maker goes about their business within their
jurisdiction. We argue that in times of crisis such as the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic the
above-mentioned equilibrium expectations no longer apply, which leads us to the hypothesis that
the differences between cabinet types should yield observably and predictably different
outcomes. We present our theoretical argument below, which brings to the forefront 1) the
number of parties in the cabinet and 2) the nature of electoral competition (for instance, whether
they compete for the same voters or not).
The number of parties in government should matter primarily for several reasons. First,
from the common-pool resource perspective any value attached to policy, positive or negative,
should create problems. For policies that parties want to claim credit for, the problem is classic:
as long as they can take all or most of the credit and corresponding electoral benefit for policy
measures while shouldering only a fraction of the blame for consequences (such as increased
debt or taxes), they should ratchet up spending. And the division of policy making into
jurisdictions controlled by coalition parties facilitates precisely the kind of jurisdiction-specific
credit claiming that leads to such problems. If the potential fallout from policy making is
unpredictable or possibly even negative, as in the case of the application of restrictions on
movement and gatherings along with mandates such as mask-wearing and vaccination
restrictions, the possibility that credit for any benefits will be shared with other coalition partners
while the responsible party will bear the brunt of voter anger should mean that necessary policies
are undersupplied (Olson, 1965). In either case, for policies voters like as well as for policies
they don’t, the more parties there are in the governing coalition the more difficult it is expected
44
to be for government to supply good public policy.
There is more to cabinet policy making than the tragedy of the commons, however.
Parties’ incentives to compete on policy grounds ought to depend at least in part on the extent to
which they compete for the same voters (“impressionable” voters; Pavlović & Xefteris, 2020).
For example, regional parties that don’t run candidates against each other really don’t compete
electorally at all and thus have no reason to compete on policy (or any other) grounds. Viewed
from this perspective, the common pool problem takes on a different hue: single-party
governments, of course, have no coalition partners to compete with and cannot suffer any
potential pernicious collective-action effects. Two-party governments, by contrast, should work
very differently from multiparty governments, all else equal.
Single-party majority governments, as noted, should for their part be able to make and
implement their preferred policies fairly straightforwardly. But what about minority
governments? On one hand, it seems reasonable to suppose that minority-government policies
that can be passed only with outside support should involve more compromises and be less
effective overall than what majority governments produce. This view makes sense in particular
for the kinds of policies parties might want to claim credit for. Alternatively, however, inasmuch
as the need for value tradeoffs in policy means that policies involve costs as well as—if not more
than—benefits nongovernment parties might be happy to support measures they see as necessary
even as they let the government bear the costs.
In many respects, including perhaps an expectation of delayed response to crises relative
to single-party governments, two-party and multiparty governments should be similar. But in
other respects, we think two parties in coalition should look very different from three or more
parties. Parties in multiparty governments are able to appeal to different sets of voters because,
45
realistically, they have relatively limited constituencies. The more parties in government, the
fewer jurisdictions any given party is likely to control.
4
And if specific jurisdictions are of
interest to specific constituencies, the fewer jurisdictions parties control the less reason they have
to be competing for uncommitted voters. In general, the same is less likely to be true of parties in
two-party (majority) governments, where party constituencies must be on average larger.
5
The
larger a party is the more likely it is to be a so-called catch-all party that seeks to attract support
4
Whatever coalition policy looks like in terms of bills passed—whether policies are the
product of some overall interparty compromise, as the mass of coalition scholarship assumes
(e.g., Tsebelis & Money, 1997), or are parsed out to parties in line with the cabinet portfolios
they control (e.g., Alexiadou & Hoepfner, 2019; Heller, 2001; Laver & Shepsle, 1996)—actual
bills are elaborated and policies implemented in whichever ministries have jurisdiction.
5
It is of course possible that two-party coalitions form of parties that do not seek to
attract the same sets of uncommitted voters. Grand Coalitions might be of that sort, at least
inasmuch as the parties in question compete for voters more with other parties closer to their own
positions than with each other. Or for instance the case of Giuseppe Conte’s second government,
a coalition of the populist Movimento 5 Stelle and the anti-populist Partito Democratico, which
apparently disagreed not only on questions of policy but on fundamental questions of the proper
conduct of politics. As Horowitz (2019) reported, “the joining of two parties that have called
each other every name in the book, including Mafiosi and kidnappers, internet trolls and
hatemongers, was remarkable”. We expect, given that they start from a position of political and
almost existential conflict, that such coalitions should be able to achieve little.
46
from multiple and varied constituencies; and while smaller parties partnered with larger partner
parties in two-party coalitions might themselves have small, clearly identifiable constituencies
the same is less likely to be true of their coalition partners. As a consequence, the larger parties
in such coalitions have incentive to use credit claiming and blame shifting to try to poach voters
from their partners, and the smaller partner parties have no choice but to respond in kind.
In sum, we have argued that while the classic common-pool logic might hold up for
straightforward economic policy making we believe there are good reasons that we might
observe something different where the policy tradeoffs are qualitatively different. And we think a
health crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic is just such a crisis. Rather than government failures
following from common-pool problems, we expect multiparty coalition governments to perform
better than their two-party brethren, all else equal. The empirical evidence presented in the next
section corroborates this hypothesis.
2.4 Case Selection
Italy, Spain, Finland, and Denmark are similar in some—but not all—important respects.
At the macro level, all are multiparty parliamentary democracies with decentralized health
systems. And they entered the pandemic in more-or-less similar circumstances with respect to
health-care resources. For instance, all four countries have similar numbers of physicians and
hospital beds per capita (Table 2.1), though the Nordic countries have nearly twice as many
nurses per 100000 inhabitants as their southern counterparts. With respect to health spending
there are notable differences between the southern and northern countries, depending on the
metric used (Table 2.2): spending as a percentage of GDP is roughly equal across cases, but a
sizeable gap opens up between Denmark and Finland on one hand and Spain and Italy on the
47
other depending on whether spending is measured in terms of per capita purchasing power, euros
per capita, or total spending in euros.
Figure 2.1 shows a snapshot of confirmed cases of COVID-19 in our four countries over
the first six months of the pandemic. We focus here on the first six months because we are
interested in the rapidity and effectiveness of initial government responses; and we highlight the
number of cases rather than deaths (though deaths and cases do covary) because the relevant
policies—e.g., lockdowns, mask mandates, restrictions on business and private (and public)
gatherings—are directed not at treating the disease per se but rather at containing its spread. As
can be seen, Italy and Spain—particularly Spain—were hard hit by the disease in the early days
(a pattern that repeated in the fall 2020 wave until Denmark surpassed both in early 2021).
Finland’s rolling seven-day count of confirmed cases never exceeded double digits throughout
the first year of the pandemic.
Table 2.1 Physicians nurses, and hospital beds per 100,000 inhabitants in Denmark, Finland,
Italy, and Spain
Country
Physicians1
Nurses4
Hospital
beds4
Denmark
400.12
1009.9
243
Finland
348.03
1022.85
361
Italy
425.1
574.2
314.1
Spain
457.7
586.9
297.2
(Eurostat 2022b; Eurostat, 2022a; Eurostat, 2022c Table 1. )
1 2020.
2 2019 data.
3 2018 data.
4 2018.
5 2014 data.
Table 2.2 Health spending in Denmark, Finland, Italy, and Spain, 2019
Country
Euros
Euros
PPS
% of GDP
per inhabitant
48
Denmark
31137
5355
3915
9.96
Finland
21992
5042
3258
9.15
Spain
113674
2412
2573
9.13
Italy
155249
2599
2611
8.67
(Eurostat, 2021), Table 2.1.
Clearly, some of the differences across our cases could be due to structural or contextual
factors beyond any government control. The populations of Italy and Spain, for example, were
over eight times larger than those of Denmark and Finland in 2020 (World Bank), though Spain,
Italy, and Denmark were fairly close in terms of population density (World Bank). But Spain and
Italy are for more popular as tourist destinations, for example, which could easily have impacted
the number of cases early on. And all four countries exhibit the familiar wave pattern that
characterizes this and other pandemics we have seen. That said, however, we suspect that at least
some of the dramatic differences in the incidence of COVID-19 across these cases can be traced
to the dynamics of cabinet policy making.
Figure 2.1 Daily new COVID-19 cases per million residents in Denmark, Finland, Italy, and
Spain
Source: Mathieu E et al (2020) Coronavirus Pandemic (COVID-19). Our World In Data,
Oxford. https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus.
49
From the political-institutional perspective, all four countries we examine share some
basic similarities. They are unitary parliamentary regimes with decentralized healthcare systems,
and all have multiparty legislatures with nine or more parties and an effective number of
parliamentary parties greater than 4 (see Table 2.3). They nevertheless show variation in the type
of cabinets and number of parties, with a single-party minority cabinet in Denmark, multiparty
coalition government in Finland, and two major-party coalition governments in Italy and Spain).
In both Finland and Denmark, the seat share of the largest parliamentary party is close to
25 percent, while in neither country does any party have less than 2.5 percent of seats. In Spain
and Italy, by contrast, the largest party in each country holds about 35 percent of seats while the
smallest party’s seat share is less than half a percent. And in Spain and Italy the second-largest
party has only about half as many seats as the largest, compared to 90 and 98 percent in
Denmark and Finland, respectively.
Table 2.3 Parliamentary and Cabinet Parties in Denmark, Finland, Italy, and Spain
Country
Leg pties1
ENPP2
Total Seats1
Large1
Small1,a
Cab pties3
Basis
Diff 1b
Diff2c
Denmark
11
5.9
179
47
6
1
Min
0.268
0.268
Finland
10
6.4
200
49
5
5
Maj
0.045
0.100
Italy
12
4.3
630
227
1
4
Maj
0.183
0.360
Spain
13
4.75
350
123
1
3
Min
0.243
0.343
1 Regional representatives not elected on a party list (i.e., from the Faroe Islands and
Greenland for Denmark, from Åland for Finland, and from the Val d’Aosta and expatriate
voters for Italy) are counted as if from a single, distinct party (Parties and Elections in Europe).
2 Effective number of parliamentary parties (Casal Bértoa, 2022).
3 The count for Italy incudes two small splinter parties that have not competed in
elections and the count for Spain includes one member of the Communist Party (PCE) that ran
on a joint ticket with Podemos (Casal Bértoa, 2022).
a Not including representatives not affiliated with a party.
50
b Difference in legislative seat shares of the largest and second largest parties in
cabinet.
c Difference in legislative seat shares of the largest and third largest parties in cabinet.
As can be seen in Figure 2.2, Spain and Italy both eventually adopted fairly strong
measures to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic. To account for the cumulative policy
stringency, we make use of the average total Protective Policy Index (Shvetsova et al., 2022).
The index consists of 15 non-medical interventions (e.g., border closures, school closures,
restriction of businesses, requirement of social distances and self-isolation etc.) and takes into
account policy efforts at both national and subnational levels. Relative to the number of cases
and deaths, however, both countries probably should have done more and sooner. Italy’s
response was essentially a slow ratcheting up policy stringency that began in a timely fashion but
then lagged as cases and deaths increased rapidly. Spain also applied measures of increasing
stringency over time, but also took longer to do anything in the first place. That both initially
reacted more quickly than Finland and Denmark might reasonably be attributed to the
negotiating costs of allocating new and unforeseen responsibilities to ministries (for Finland)
and, for Denmark where the government’s parliamentary basis was just over 26 percent, the need
to get a solid parliamentary majority behind the government’s efforts. The key point, to reiterate,
is that we see Finland’s (and Denmark’s) aggressive response in the face of a much lower impact
of the disease as at least partly a consequence of coalition dynamics. We delve into this argument
in the case studies below.
Figure 2.2 Covid Impact and Early Responses in Denmark, Finland, Italy, and Spain: Stringency
and Timing
51
Source for stringency: Shvetsova et al., 2022; source for Deaths/million and
Cases/million: Mathieu E et al (2020) Coronavirus Pandemic (COVID-19). Our World In Data,
Oxford. https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus.
2.5 Spain and Italy
There are several explanations in the literature for why the Italian and Spanish response
to Covid in the first wave was so chaotic, delayed and close to failure. One obvious problem lay
in the fact that both countries, and Italy in particular, were guinea pigs in fighting Covid in
Europe. Both countries were already in a full-on war against the pandemic well before the it was
clear what clinical practices (e.g., who should be hospitalized and how to treat the disease) and
other policy interventions (including testing systems, masking, social distancing, and isolation)
would be most successful. Timing aside, many observers highlight structural issues, including:
underinvestment in universal healthcare provision, especially following the 2008 world financial
crisis and subsequent austerity measures (e.g., Stuckler et al., 2017; Casula & Pazos-Vidal,
2021); high population density (Gutiérrez et al., 2020); demography, with Italy being the most
aged country in the EU with 23 percent of the population aged 65 or more) and Spain also
harboring a large elderly population (17 percent) (Dowd et al., 2020).
52
Apart from the timing and structural factors, many researchers emphsize the role of
political institutions, political culture, and governance, especially the mechanism of coordination
between the center and regions in crisis management (Casula & Pazos-Vidal, 2021; Parrado &
Gali, 2021; Peralta-Santos et al., 2021; Ruiu, 2020; Malandrino & Demichelis, 2020; Mattei &
Del Pino, 2021). Center-regional relations are of paramount importance in both Italy and Spain,
which are unitary by constitution, but share several quasi-federal arrangements and—importantly
for the handling of the pandemic—healthcare federalism. Most authors argue that inefficient
center-regional coordination coupled with criticism from regional parties, both ruling and
opposition, as well as blame-shifting games between center and regions are responsible for the
delay in response in both countries, albeit more so in Spain. Deficits in state capacity represent
another powerful explanation for the first wave policy failures (Bosancianu et al., 2020; Capano,
2020).
The section below takes the form of a series of analytic narratives, outlining the main
policy responses in Italy and Spain and applying our theoretical perspective highlighting partisan
and coalitional dynamics to each case. It is important to note that we view our theory as
consistent with and complementary to existing explanations and not as a strict alternative. By the
conventional wisdom on coalition policy making, which builds on common-pool logic, Spain
and Italy’s two-party coalitions should perform better than Finland’s five-party cabinet and
Denmark’s single-party government should do better still, all else equal. But as the data on the
spread of COVID-19 in the early days of the pandemic show, Finland fared better than all three
other countries and the spread of the disease in both Denmark and Finland was much less
pronounced than in Italy and Spain. This observation runs contrary to the conventional wisdom
but is consistent with our claim that that the number of parties within ruling coalitions has a
53
nonlinear effect upon policies: both single- and multi-party coalition, all else equal, are expected
to outperform two-party coalitions.
2.6 Italy
After Italy confirmed its first Covid-19 case in January 2020, then-Prime Minister Conte
immediately announced the appointment of a Special Commissioner for the COVID-19
emergency. Even so, it was more than three weeks before the first quarantine zones were
declared in Northern Italy. Beginning on 22 February, as the situation deteriorated, the Italian
government adopted what on paper appeared to be the strictest set of measures in Europe to slow
down the spread of the virus. For instance, all sports events were suspended, as were the
Carnival of Venice and the Carnival of Ivrea, and quarantine zones were declared in several
regions. Measures included closure of schools, universities, cultural and other public venues,
bans on social gatherings, and suspension of commercial activities. The scope of the lockdown
was unprecedented in the context of peacetime democratic Europe (Bull, 2021). However,
because time was of utmost importance in the face of the virus’s exponential spread, the
government’s dilatory response had drastic consequences, especially in the Northern regions.
In early and mid-March the government extended lockdowns to incorporate new affected
areas in the North, which led to people migrating to the South to escape restrictions, often in the
overcrowded transport that could add to the already rising number of cases. Roberto Speranza,
Health Minister at the time of the start of the pandemic and the only member of the Free and
Equal parliamentary group to hold a ministerial portfolio, distinguished himself from his
coalition partners by his hawkish calls for a full lockdown. It is important to note here that
Speranza’s electoral concerns probably were quite different from those of the larger coalition
54
parties.
6
As such, it would have been fortunate that he held the health portfolio, where he was
free to impose within the powers of his ministry such measures as he saw fit. Conte and the other
ministers, primarily concerned with the state of the economy, initially took milder stances.
Finally, on 21 March after realizing that partial lockdowns did not work as intended and
amid fears that the healthcare system in poorer Southern regions was not ready to cope with its
own population, let alone migrants from the North, Conte’s government introduced a full
lockdown. People were required to stay at home, many commercial businesses were closed, but
by that time the health infrastructure was overloaded, and daily deaths had already reached an
all-time high. The lockdown was extended in early April, suspending all “non-essential”
businesses introducing increased fines for non-compliance. Cases finally began to decline in
May-early June 2020, which allowed the government to lift certain measures (e.g., reopening
businesses and leisure activities and resuming first interregional and then international travel).
During the summer the government acted decisively (reinstating measures where they were
appropriate and lifting them where they were deemed unnecessary) and the public generally
complied. By fall 2020 Italy had shaken off the image of a country that drastically failed its
6
Parliamentary groups in Italy often are unrelated to electoral parties. Free and Equal
won 14 list seats in the 2018 Camera dei Diputati election as an electoral coalition, but had
disbanded as an electoral contender by the 2019 European Parliament elections. We assume that
its minister, Roberto Speranza, thus was essentially an independent insofar as electoral politics
were concerned. And it is difficult as of this writing to gauge Italia Viva’s current electoral
interests, as it has yet to contest elections.
55
response to covid-19 (Bull, 2021). And during the pandemic’s second wave in fall 2020 Italy
fared better than many other European countries, which some researchers (e.g., Bontempti, 2021)
attributed to specific policy measures such as masking in public, and teleworking that helped
reduce human-to-human interactions, along with strict enforcement and high public compliance.
According to our argument, Italy’s inefficient and weak initial response is at least in part
due to the composition of the coalition government—primarily two major parties with a few
ministries held by minor partners—in which parties competed for voters and thus were
incentivized to engage in blame-shifting and credit-claiming. When the pandemic struck Italy
was led by the Conte II cabinet, formed in September 2019 as a majority coalition between the
big-tent populist Five-Stars Movement and center-left Democratic Party, with three independent
ministers and one minister from the Free and Equal parliamentary group (Camara dei Diputati;
Casal Bertoa, 2022). Shortly after the government was formed two of its ministers left the PD as
part of a small schism party, Italia Viva (IV), but remained in the coalition.
The ruling center-left coalition in Italy emerged from ideologically incompatible parties
in 2019 in the wake of a major government crisis in which the Lega left the ruling center-right
coalition. So the government already was highly fragmented and polarized when the Covid
pandemic hit: On one hand, the ruling M5S is a centrist, populist, catch-all party that has been
described as anti-establishment, eurosceptic, and anti-globalist. Its support comes primarily from
the eastern and more rural parts of the country (Russo et al., 2017). On the other hand, the junior
coalition partner, PD, is a pro-European, progressive, left-Christian party. They share little
common ground with respect to policy, a division that extends to how they characterize each
other as well (see, e.g., Horowitz, 2019)
56
Disagreements between coalition partners are partially to blame for hampering the anti-
Covid measures’ adoption. For example, even before the first confirmed case of COVID-19 the
parliamentary parties had several large disputes over Covid spending which ultimately resulted
in Italia Viva (IV) leaving the ruling coalition (albeit much later, in January 2021) and provoked
a government crisis (BBC News, 2020a; BBC News, 2020b) By April, with the number of new
cases dropping rapidly, the public rallied behind its government. The Prime Minister’s ratings
soared, and he did not hesitate to claim credit for managing the crisis. Defending his plans to
slowly lift what was Europe’s longest-running lockdown amid criticism from business and
politicians in opposition and in the ruling coalition alike, Conte declared that “if I could turn the
clock back, I’d do it all again” (Aljazeera, 2020b) During the first wave of the Covid pandemic,
many parliamentary opposition members as well as representatives of regional governments had
opposed covid restrictions (Bosa et al., 2021), so for Conte it was an easy victory.
2.7 Spain
The early response to the pandemic in Spain was quite similar to that in Italy. Spain’s
first case of the Covid-19 was confirmed on 1 February 2020 (Johns Hopkins Coronavirus
Research Center). And despite lockdowns in several neighborhoods on 7 March, 120,000 people
participated in the International Women’s Day march, which was later backlashed by the
international health authorities the next day. By March 12th all regional governments had closed
schools and some travel restrictions were introduced. But it was not until a month and half later,
after the detection of the first case, that Sánchez’s government announced a State of Alarm from
15 March, which included partial lockdown and then the first full lockdown (28 March–12
April). After March 15th non-essential movement was limited and non-essential businesses as
well as schools were closed. By then Covid-19 already had reached all provinces of the country,
57
and in several regions the number of infections was growing exponentially. The second
lockdown (starting March 28th) saw tightening of the previous restrictions, making all non-
essential employees work from home. The state of alarm allowing emergency restrictions was
extended five times and lasted until 20 June, each time receiving less and less support from the
Parliament and thus forcing the government to adopt milder anti-covid measures. Relaxing
confinement measures was predicated on the establishment of four phases, which allowed
regionally tailored policy making on the bases of key indicators (local transmission rates and
healthcare capacity). The strategy for exiting from lockdown presumed mandatory mask
wearing, restrictions on social gatherings, remote work if possible, and maintaining social
distancing (Dubin, 2021).
As our theory suggests, inefficiencies in the Spanish response to Covid during the first
wave could be traced back to the structure of the governing coalition, within which two major
parties (or, more accurately, one major party and one rising new party with ambitions to take its
place) reluctantly found consensus. The first coalition government in Spain since before Franco
took control of the country in the 1930s formed just before the first confirmed case of COVID-19
in the country. Pedro Sánchez of the Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) formed a two-party
minority government (21 seats shy of the 176 seats required for a majority) with Unidos
Podemos (UP). Not only was the country shaken by the deep political and government crises
over the preceding year, but the freshly baked coalition partners-in-government had no time to
adjust to coalition governing style and learn to cooperate with each other, let alone prepare for
fighting the global pandemic. Although from a strict left-right ideological perspective the PSOE
and UP were much closer to each other in policy terms than their Italian counterparts, including
58
with respect to dealing with the pandemic, they also developed—and publicly aired—important
disagreements on many fronts beyond just pandemic response early on.
Indeed, Sánchez’s cabinet during the Covid pandemic was even more polarized, hostile,
and fragmented than Conte’s in Italy. First, to reiterate, Sanchez’s government was a minority
coalition with only 155 out of 350 seats in the Congreso de Diputados. The situation was similar
in the upper chamber, where the governing parties controlled only 115 of 256 seats. More
importantly for our argument, both coalitions were highly fractious with partner parties publicly
engaging in blame-shifting games as well as publicly disagreeing on subjects ranging “from
monarchies to rappers” (Hedgecoe, 2021) the judiciary, or regional policy. As we see it, the
governing parties’ conflictual relationship—in a very real sense, UP was a new, upstart party that
had only entered parliament in 2015 and was actively seeking to annex the political space long
held by the PSOE—is fundamental to understanding why Spain’s initial response was so
ineffectual.
2.8 Denmark and Finland
Perhaps the most common explanation in the literature for Finland and Denmark’s
success with respect to Covid-19 early on is Nordic exceptionalism. This perspective,
highlighting the Nordics’ characteristic high trust in government leading to high compliance with
government policy mandates, is consistent with explanations that tout as well-established
institutions, existing governing features, media support, and Nordic culture.
Policy makers in both Finland and Denmark took their cues from expert opinions and
closely followed the recommendations of their national healthcare agencies (Christensen et al.,
2022). In Finland, this meant relying on the advice of the Finnish Institute for Health and
Welfare; established in the 1960s and 1970s to provide systematic knowledge in healthcare
59
(Moisio, 2020); for its part, the Danish government first established an emergency crises
response coordination commission made up of members from various national authorities
(Saunes et al., 2022). Additionally, in early May Denmark formed a new agency under the
Ministry of Justice to ensure coronavirus preparedness.
Building on their own public-health institutions, Nordic countries already had a
foundation for cooperating with each other in sharing information and knowledge. Rules
established under Nordic Public Health Preparedness Agreement, signed in 2002 by Denmark,
Finland, Iceland, Sweden, and Norway to ensure cooperation and assistance for emergencies like
Covid-19 that required the signatories to exchange experiences, to share information on planned
measures (including legislative initiatives), and to provide opportunities for cooperation. Given
the strong basis for cooperation and utilization of expertise, Denmark and Finland's initial
success in dealing with Covid-19 seems unsurprising (Saunes et.al., 2022; Socialstyrelsen). That
said, however, our theoretical framework provides additional understanding of what it is that
makes the Nordics different.
We turn below to analyze the Danish and Finnish responses to the first wave of the
Covid-19 pandemic and apply our theoretical argument which complements existing
explanations in the literature. Where Spain and Italy both had two-party governments at the
outset of the pandemic, Finland had a five-party majority coalition and Denmark had a single-
party minority cabinet with a government basis of only 27 percent of parliamentary seats. If
policy making and the consequent electoral implications of credit or blame allocation followed
common-pool resource logic, neither country should have responded well to the COVID-19
threat. In Finland, the expected infighting among parties seeking to ensure that their connection
to government policies worked to their own electoral advantage at the expense of their coalition
60
partners should have made putting together an effective response to the disease difficult at
best—leave aside the difficulties posed by transactions costs alone as coalition partners negotiate
how to deal with an unforeseen crisis. And in Denmark, opposition parties could have put
demands on the government that made any kind of coherent policy making impossible. But they
did not.
2.9 Finland
Sanna Marin of the Social Democratic Party of Finland (SDP) replaced Antti Rinne at the
head of Finland’s five-party governing coalition government in December 2019, not long before
the first Covid-19 case in the country. The speed and scope of the government response to covid
is perhaps surprising given that the center-left government, made up of Marin’s SDP (40 seats),
the Center Party (KESK, 31 seats), the Green League (VIHR, 20 seats), the Democratic
Union|Left Alliance (VAS, 16 seats), and the Swedish People's Party (RKP-SFP, 9 seats) had
formed only six months earlier as Finland’s first coalition cabinet led from the left in twenty
years.
Finland’s first confirmed case of COVID-19 came early in the pandemic, when a tourist
from Wuhan, China was diagnosed with the illness on 29 January (Tiirinki et al., 2020, p. 649).
The disease did not really get going in the country until March, however, with the total number
of reported cases going from three on 25 February to 10 on 2 March and then to 44 just one week
later (Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Research Center). The first death came on 7 March. On March
16, in a press conference attended by all coalition party leaders but Green League leader Maria
Ohisalo (who was duly present at another press conference the next day), the government
declared a state of emergency, closed K-12 schools and universities, banned public gatherings of
more than ten people, closed museums, cultural venues, and sports facilities, and initiated a two-
61
week quarantine period for travelers from abroad. It was at the time arguably the strictest
government response in Europe to the pandemic. Thereafter, Prime Minister Marin held daily
press conferences with representatives from all coalition parties in attendance until 27 March,
demonstrating a unified front and cooperation among governing partners. These conferences
followed a narrative structure such that each minister’s delivery continued from and built on the
previous speaker’s last point. This unified approach continued throughout the pandemic, passing
its first major test with the March 25 passage via emergency legislation of 118 measures
including restaurant closures and travel restrictions between the Helsinki metropolitan and the
rest of the country until after Easter (Koljonen & Palonen, 2021). The force of this measure is
noteworthy, in particular given Finns’ penchant for taking advantage of the Easter holiday and
the season’s warming weather to travel north to enjoy the snow (Moisio, 2020).
Superficially, one would expect the parties in Finland’s government to have a hard time
cooperating. Not only should the number of government parties make reaching agreement
difficult, but they might be motivated to ensure that they don’t lose votes to—and if possible that
they gain votes from—their partner parties on the left. Nonetheless, Interior Minister Dr. Maria
Ohisalo of the Green League emphasized that during a crisis like covid-19 it is important that the
leaders of the five coalition parties cooperate and act like one leader (Janjuha-Jivraj, 2020). She
described her approach to governmental cooperation during covid-19 as a win-win-win—
everybody needs to win something (Janjuha-Jivraj, 2020), attributing Finland’s effective response
to existing trust and cooperation among coalition partners: “the strength of the pre-existing
working relationships is critical in having created trust and a clear way of how to work together
and reach effective decisions” (Janjuha-Jivraj, 2020).
62
It makes sense that policy making and implementation in response to a crisis like the
COVID-19 pandemic should work best if line ministers can work together to create an effective
response to fight the virus without destroying the economy. And in Finland, consistent with our
argument about the advantages of minimizing jurisdictional overlap, crucial portfolios for
COVID-19 policy making were held by different coalition partners. Aside from the Prime
Minister (SDP), the Finance and Economic Affairs ministries fell to KESK, the Education and
Health ministers were held by VAS, and VIHR controlled the Interior ministry. Far from
contributing to intracoalition division, we argue that this separation of responsibilities
contributed to cabinet members being able to work harmoniously to fight the virus. To reiterate,
the less overlap there is across parties with respect to ministerial jurisdictions the less parties
have to worry about sharing either blame for other parties’ actions or credit for their own. That,
we think, motivates parties and their ministers both to design effective policy and to support their
partners’ efforts to do the same. This in striking contrast to the interparty jealousies that seem to
have dominated policy making in Spain and Italy’s two-party governments.
We argue that multiparty coalitions are at an advantage in dealing with Covid-19 in part
because more parties mean less overlap in jurisdictional responsibilities. Evidence in line with
this claim indicates that Finnish voters were willing and able to point fingers at specific agencies
and ministers when it came to evaluating the government’s Covid-19 response. For instance,
many tweets criticized the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare for not being strict enough,
criticism that extended to the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health, and to minister Aino-Kaisa
Pekonen of the Left Alliance; and while the entire government was not immune from blame,
voters were clearly able to connect parties to their jurisdictional responsibilities (Koljonen &
Palonen, 2021). This aligns with our argument, as constituents distinguished among coalition
63
parties and their portfolio responsibilities, obviating the utility of playing the credit-claiming or
blame games when it comes to policy responsibility.
The government began to discuss plans for gradual opening in early May, deciding to
move from large-scale restrictions to targeted measures focusing on a “test, trace, isolate and
treat” strategy (European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies, 2022). Beginning on 14
May kindergarten and elementary schools were returned to normal, travel restrictions for
Schengen borders were relaxed, and outdoor recreational facilities were reopened. And from
June first the ten-person limitation on social gatherings was increased to 50 and dining at
restaurants and sport facilities was allowed. While the country was not opening fast enough for
some business sectors (the Confederation of Finnish Industries, businesses representatives, and
economists criticized the government for the slow opening), the center-right opposition in the
parliament supported the government’s careful and steady approach of lifting restrictions
(Moisio, 2020).
Finland nicely illustrates the advantages of fomenting cooperation among coalition
partners while at the same time clearly dividing up their responsibilities. Government press
conferences highlighted policy collaboration across ministerial portfolios even as they gave
individual ministers from the various coalition parties a platform to present plans for fighting
Covid-19 in their jurisdictions. Since constituents could easily link the decisions taken in
different jurisdictions to the coalition parties responsible for them this helped to reduce of credit
claiming and blame shifting.
2.10 Denmark
Denmark reported its first confirmed case of COVID-19 on 27 February, several weeks
after the first Finnish case. Within only about two weeks, on 11 March, Prime Minister Mette
64
Frederiksen announced strict measures to take effect two days later (and three days before the
first confirmed COVID-19 death in the country). The response was strict as well as rapid,
including closing schools, leisure centers, cultural institutions, and libraries, requiring public
employees to work from home, and closing international borders. Finland’s first death from the
disease had come earlier, on 7 March, only a week before Denmark’s (Johns Hopkins
Coronavirus Research Center), but by 16 March Denmark’s response to the pandemic joined that
of Finland as one of the strictest in Europe.
Uniquely among our cases, Denmark’s government was a single-party Social Democrat
(SD) minority cabinet that had taken office under the leadership of Mette Frederiksen shortly
after June 2019 elections with parliamentary support from the Socialist People's party (SF), the
Red- Green Alliance (EL), and the Social Liberal Party (RV). The government had the full
support from the parliament at the onset of the pandemic, to the extent that it took parliament
only twelve hours to pass major amendments to the Epidemic Act of Denmark, in force since
1915, on the same day that Frederiksen announced the closures (Rothmar Herrmann, 2020). The
amendment passed, moreover, with unanimous parliamentary support.
The act passed on 12 March shifted power from regional authorities to the government.
In this centralization of usually decentralized authorities Denmark’s actions were similar to those
measures (de jure or de facto) in Spain and Italy, although compliance arguably was better. In
normal times, regional epidemic commissions held the authority not only to prohibit events but
also to initiate treatment without consent force individuals to isolate, and forcefully admit
patients into hospitals (Rothmar Herrmann, 2020). The act transferred these powers to the health
minister, along with additional new authority to use the police to isolate, examine, and treat
persons believed to be infected. And though the act raised questions among scholars about
65
human rights violations, public trust in government remained high. According to a survey of
government COVID-19 responses conducted in fourteen advanced democracies, 95 percent of
Danish respondents thought that their government handled the pandemic well, the highest
approval among all countries in the survey (Devlin, & Connaughton, 2020)
The Danish government was controlled by a single party, but as a minority government
with an actual government basis of only 48 of 179 parliamentary seats it could not govern alone
or hope for strategic abstentions that might help it get its way. Rather, it had to cooperate from
the outset with other parties and the societal interests they represent. And, similar to the partners
in Finland’s five-party coalition, the Social Democrats had every incentive to design the best
policies they could as there was no other party that could either steal the credit or share the blame
for policies the voters didn’t like. This facilitated cooperation in parliament as well as with
businesses and meant that the Danish government’s response was inclusive, informed, and
effective.
Prime Minister Frederiksen announced plans at the end of March for gradually reopening
the country beginning in mid-April. After three weeks of lockdown, Denmark was, with Austria,
the first country in Europe to start reopening. Following consultations with the other parties in
parliament, the opening started with day care centers and elementary schools, with the idea of
helping to ease parents’ childcare responsibilities and encourage the workforce to return to
“normal”. Frederiksen referred to the balance between healthcare and the economy, mentioning
possibility of a deep recession if stayed in lockdown for too long in the press conference, noting
that “the situation we are in is far more complicated than appreciating human life”. She added
that “we cannot open a textbook—neither on healthcare nor economy—and find the right
66
answer”, and recognizing that ultimately “the strategy we follow is a political choice” (Aljazeera,
2020a).
Frederiksen’s government balanced its stringent disease-fighting measures with new
fiscal policies. Three days after the announcement of closures, the government put a temporary
wage compensation program in effect to prevent businesses from firing their employees. The
government also covered 75 percent of the wages of furloughed salaried workers (Ornston,
2021), later announcing another program for self-employed workers. And, consistent with the
minority government’s need to make and maintain allies, Denmark’s recovery package was
based on a proposal by Denmark’s largest trade union and employer organization (ILO, 2020 as
cited in Ornston, 2021). Like Finland, the Danish government put cooperation front and center in
its COVID-19 response; and for the effort it was one of the most successful countries in fighting
against the spread of the virus. The government might have had the institutional tools to manage
the pandemic on its own, but the political calculations of minority governance were sufficient
motivation for the government to maintain close cooperation with the opposition rather than
dealing with the pandemic unilaterally.
2.11 Discussion
It is easy to look at our four cases and pass off their differences as predictable
consequences of country-specific cultural distinctions or manifestations of the more general
north-south divide. But to our eyes, these are not explanations but rather alternative ways of
describing the observation that Spain and Italy are more similar to each other than to Denmark
and Finland—and vice-versa–in their COVID-19 responses. In arguing that the number and
competitive relationships of parties in government is a basic driver of government behavior and
response, we have offered a reasonable, theoretically grounded explanation for the quality,
67
extent, and effectiveness of government action that is consistent with our cases. And more
broadly, we have suggested that thinking of government policy making in terms of the standard
common-pool resource problem probably is misguided.
We focus in this chapter on governments’ initial response to the pandemic because we
believe that the first reactions to something like the novel coronavirus are particularly telling.
What happened later is of course in part attributable to what governments did at the outset, but it
is possible as well that later waves were worse than they might otherwise have been because
governments, buoyed by their initial successes, loosened the reins of control more or more
quickly than they should have. And what we find in our four case studies fits nicely with our
theoretical outlook: where government parties had little reason to compete on covid-response
policy grounds, whether because party responsibility for specific measures was easily traceable
or because the parties in question had little cause to seek to attract voters away from each other,
the response went fairly smoothly. Where accountability was murkier (or parties had incentives
to make it murky), due to both shared responsibilities and electoral competition, things were
more problematic.
We do not of course claim that interparty coalition politics is the only determinant of
government policy making. Far from it. Other factors, from existing policy to the resources
available for policy making and implementation to opposition parties (Sartori, 1976), surely
matter a great deal. We do think coalition politics is important, however: what government does
matters, and what government does is—or at least should be if elections and government
formation, i.e., parliamentary democracy, mean anything—a consequence of the parties in
government and their interactions.
68
This chapter represents a first cut at the broader idea that party competition is not only
not constant across time (Sagarzazu & Klüver, 2017), but that it also is not even constant across
parties. We have presented case-study evidence that clearly delineating the policy responsibilities
of parties in government might make it easier for them to cooperate and we have argued that this
is more easily done the more parties there are in government. A more comprehensive look at this
notion would look at more cases and employ tools to more comprehensively nail down the
relationship between number of parties in government and the degree to which they manage to
cooperate. And we hope this chapter might serve as a first step for such research.
References
Adeel AB, Catalano M, Catalano O, Gibson G, Muftuoglu E, Riggs T, Sezgin MH,
Shvetsova O, Tahir N, VanDusky-Allen J, Zhao T, Zhirnov A (2020) COVID-19 policy response
and the rise of the sub-national governments. Canadian Public Policy, 46(4):565–584.
https://doi.org/10.3138/cpp.2020-101
Alexiadou D (2016) Ideologues, partisans, and loyalists. Oxford University Press,
Oxford.
Alexiadou D, Gunaydin H (2019) Commitment or expertise? Technocratic appointments
as political responses to economic crises. European Journal of Political Research 58(3): 845–865.
https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-6765.12338
Alexiadou D, Hoepfner D (2019) Platforms, portfolios, policy: How audience costs affect
social welfare policy in multiparty cabinets. Political Science Research and Methods 7(3): 393–
409. https://doi.org/10.1017/psrm.2018.2
69
Aljazeera (2020a) Denmark prepares to ease coronavirus restrictions.
https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2020/4/3/denmark-prepares-to-ease-coronavirus-
restrictions. Accessed 2 Aug 2022
Aljazeera (2020b) Conte defends ‘slowly-slowly’ lifting of Italy’s lockdown.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/4/28/conte-defends-slowly-slowly-lifting-of-italys-
lockdown. Accessed 2 Aug 2022
Bäck H, Müller WC, Nyblade B (2017) Multiparty government and economic policy-
making: Coalition agreements, prime ministerial power and spending in Western European
Cabinets. Public Choice 170(1-2): 33–62. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11127-016-0373-0
Bagehot W (1873) The English constitution (2nd ed.). Little, Brown, and Company,
Boston.
BBC News. (2020a). Italy political crisis erupts over EU Covid spending.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-55661781. Accessed 2 Aug 2022
BBC News. (2020b). Italian PM Conte resigns in split over Covid response.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-55802611. Accessed 2 Aug 2022
Bontempi E. (2021) The Europe second wave of COVID-19 infection and the Italy
“strange” situation. Environmental Research 193:110476–110476.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envres.2020.110476
Bosa I, Castelli A, Castelli M, Ciani O, Compagni A, Galizzi M M et al (2021) Corona-
regionalism? Differences in regional responses to COVID-19 in Italy. Health Policy
125(9):1179-1187.
Bosancianu C M, Hilbig H, Humphreys M, KC S, Lieber N, Scacco A (2020). Political
and Social correlates of Covid-19 mortality. SocArXiv doi:10.31235/osf.io/ub3zd.
70
Budge I, McDonald M D (2007) Election and party system effects on policy
representation: Bringing time into a comparative perspective. Electoral Studies 26(1): 168–179.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.electstud.2006.02.001
Bull M (2021) The Italian government response to Covid-19 and the making of prime
minister. Contemporary Italian Politics 13(2): 149-165.
https://doi.org/10.1080/23248823.2021.1914453
Camara dei Diputati (2022). http://www.camera.it. Accessed 11 July 2022
Capano G (2020) Policy design and state capacity in the COVID-19 emergency in Italy:
If you are not prepared for the (un)expected, you can be only what you already are. Policy &
Society 39(3):326–344. https://doi.org/10.1080/14494035.2020.1783790
Casal Bértoa F (2022) Database on WHO GOVERNS in Europe and beyond. PSGo.
http://www.whogoverns.eu.
Casula M, Pazos-Vidal S (2021) Assessing the multi-level government response to the
COVID-19 crisis: Italy and Spain compared. International Journal of Public Administration
44(11-12):994–1005. https://doi.org/10.1080/01900692.2021.1915330
Chhibber P, Nooruddin I (2004) Do party systems count?: The number of parties and
government performance in the Indian States. Comparative Political Studies 37(2):152–187.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0010414003260981
Christensen T, Jensen MD, Kluth M, Kristinsson GH, Lynggaard K, Lægreid P,
Niemikari R, Pierre J, Raunio T, Adolf Skúlason G (2022) The Nordic governments' responses to
the Covid-19 pandemic: A comparative study of variation in governance arrangements and
regulatory instruments. Regulation & Governance. https://doi.org/10.1111/rego.12497
71
Cox GW (2014) Reluctant democrats and their legislatures. In: Shane M, Saalfeld T,
Strøm K (ed) Oxford Handbook of Legislative Studies. Oxford University Press, Oxford, p 696-
717
Devlin K, Connaughton A (2020). Most approve of national response to COVID-19 in 14
advanced economies. Pew Research Center.
https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2020/08/27/most-approve-of-national-response-to-covid-
19-in-14-advanced-economies. Accessed 2 Aug 2022
Dewan T, Hortala-Vallve R (2011) The Three as of government formation:
Appointment, allocation, and assignment. American Journal of Political Science 55(3):610–627.
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5907.2011.00519.x
Dowd JB, Andriano L, Brazel DM, Rotondi V, Block P, Ding X, Liu Y, Mills MC,
(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.
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2004911117
Dubin KA (2021) Spain’s response to COVID-19. In: Greer SL, King EJ, Fonseca EM,
Peralta-Santos A (ed) Coronavirus Politics: The Comparative Politics and Policy of Covid-19.
University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor. https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11927713.
European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies. (2022, April 14) Country update:
Monitoring and surveillance. https://eurohealthobservatory.who.int/monitors/hsrm/all-
updates/hsrm/finland/monitoring-and-surveillance. Accessed 14 Nov 2022
Excess mortality during the Coronavirus Pandemic (COVID-19) (2022) Our World in
Data, Oxford. https://ourworldindata.org/excess-mortality-covid. Accessed 14 Nov 2022
72
Fortunato D (2019) Legislative review and party differentiation in coalition governments.
The American Political Science Review 113(1):242–247.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S000305541800062X
Gutiérrez E, Moral-Benito E, Oto-Peralías D, Ramos R (2020) The spatial distribution of
population in Spain: An anomaly in European perspective, Banco de España working papers:
2028.
Healthcare expenditure statistics (2021) Eurostat, Luxembourg.
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-
explained/index.php?title=Healthcare_expenditure_statistics. Accessed 28 Jul 2022
Healthcare personnel statistics – beds (2022) Eurostat, Luxembourg.
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-
explained/index.php?title=Healthcare_resource_statistics_-_beds. Accessed 28 Jul 2022
Healthcare personnel statistics - nursing and caring professionals (2022) Eurostat,
Luxembourg. https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-
explained/index.php?title=Healthcare_personnel_statistics_-_nursing_and_caring_professionals.
Accessed 28 Jul 2022
Healthcare personnel statistics – physicians (2022) Eurostat, Luxembourg.
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-
explained/index.php?title=Healthcare_personnel_statistics_-_physicians. Accessed 28 Jul 2022
Hedgecoe G (2021) Spain’s governing partners show bad blood in public. Politico,
Arlington. https://www.politico.eu/article/spain-government-coalition-bad-blood-psoe-podemos
Accessed 2 Aug 2022
73
Heller WB (2001) Making policy stick: Why the government gets what it wants in
multiparty parliaments. American Journal of Political Science 45(4):780–798.
https://doi.org/10.2307/2669324
Herrmann JR (2020) How Denmark’s epidemic act was amended to respond to COVID-
19. https://blog.petrieflom.law.harvard.edu/2020/05/26/denmark-global-responses-covid19.
Accessed 3 Oct 2022.
Horowitz J (2019) How Giuseppe Conte of Italy went from irrelevant to irreplaceable.
The New York Times, NY. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/29/world/europe/italy-conte-
government-salvini.html. Accessed 2 Aug 2022.
Huber JD (1996) Rationalizing parliament: Legislative institutions and party politics in
France. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Iversen T, Soskice D (2006) Electoral institutions and the politics of coalitions: Why
some democracies redistribute more than others. The American Political Science Review
100(2):165–181. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055406062083
Janjuha-Jivraj S (2020) Finland’s Maria Ohisalo: Navigation through Covid-19 requires
leadership based on win-win approach. Forbes, Jersey City.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/shaheenajanjuhajivrajeurope/2020/05/20/ohisalo-covid-19-
finland/?sh=3f574cf52561
Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Research Center. https://coronavirus.jhu.edu. Accessed 2
Aug 2022
Koljonen J, Palonen E (2021) Performing COVID-19 control in Finland: Interpretative
topic modelling and discourse theoretical reading of the government communication and hashtag
landscape. Frontiers in Political Science 3. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpos.2021.689614
74
Laver M, Shepsle KA (1996) Making and breaking governments: cabinets and
legislatures in parliamentary democracies. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Lijphart A (1969) Consociational democracy. World Politics 21(2): 207-225.
doi:10.2307/2009820
Listings of WHO’s response to COVID-19 (2020) World Health Organization, Geneva.
https://www.who.int/news/item/29-06-2020-covidtimeline. Accessed 29 July 2022
Malandrino A, Demichelis E (2020) Conflict in decision making and variation in public
administration outcomes in Italy during the COVID-19 crisis. European Policy Analysis 6(2):
138–146. https://doi.org/10.1002/ epa2.1093.
Mathieu E, Ritchie H, Rodés-Guirao L, Appel C, Giattino C, Hasell J, Macdonald B,
Dattani S, Beltekian D, Ortiz-Ospina E, Roser M (2020) Coronavirus Pandemic (COVID-19).
Our World In Data, Oxford. https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus. Accessed 3 Nov 2022
Mattei P, Del Pino E (2021) Coordination and health policy responses to the first wave of
COVID-19 in Italy and Spain. Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis: Research and Practice
23(2): 274-281. https://doi.org/10.1080/13876988.2021.1878886
Moisio S (2020) State power and the COVID-19 pandemic: the case of Finland. Eurasian
Geography and Economics 61(4-5):598-605. https://doi.org/10.1080/15387216.2020.1782241
Olson M (1965) The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of
Groups. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Ornston D (2021) Denmark’s response to Covid-19: A participatory approach to policy
innovation. In Greer SL, King EJ, De Fonseca EM, Peralta-Santos A (ed), Coronavirus politics:
The comparative politics and policy of Covid-19. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, p
249-263. https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11927713
75
Parrado S, Galli D (2021) Intergovernmental veto points in crisis management: Italy and
Spain facing the COVID-19 pandemic. International Review of Administrative Sciences 87(3):
576–592. https://doi.org/10.1177/0020852320985925
Parties and Elections in Europe (2022) http://www.parties-and-elections.eu Accessed 28
Jul 2022
Pavlović D, Xefteris D (2020) Qualifying the common pool problem in government
spending: the role of positional externalities. Constitutional Political Economy 31(4): 446–457.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10602-020-09306-6
Peralta-Santos A, Saboga-Nunes L, Magalhães PC (2021) A Tale of two pandemics in
three countries Portugal, Spain, and Italy. In King EJ, Da Fonseca EM, Peralta-Santos A (ed)
Coronavirus politics: The comparative politics and policy of COVID-19. University of Michigan
Press, Ann Arbor
Population (2020) World Bank, Washington DC.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.TOTL?end=2021&locations=DK-FI-IT-
ES&start=2020. Accessed 1 Aug 2022
Population Density (2020) World Bank, Washington DC.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.POP.DNST?locations=EU-DK-IT-FI-ES. Accessed 1
Aug 2022
Riker WH (1980) Implications from the disequilibrium of majority rule for the study of
institutions. American Political Science Review 74(2): 432-446. https://doi.org/10.2307/1960638
Rothmar Herrmann J (2020) How Denmark’s epidemic act was amended to respond to
COVID-19. Bill of Health. https://blog.petrieflom.law.harvard.edu/2020/05/26/denmark-global-
responses-covid19/. Accessed 3 Aug 2022
76
Ruiu ML (2020) Mismanagement of Covid-19: Lessons learned from Italy. Journal of
Risk Research 23(7-8): 1007–1020. https://doi.org/10.1080/13669877.2020.1758755
Russo L, Riera P, Verthé T (2017) Tracing the electorate of the MoVimento Cinque
Stelle: an ecological inference analysis. Rivista Italiana Di Scienza Politica 47(1): 45–62.
https://doi.org/10.1017/ipo.2016.22
Sagarzazu I, Klüver H (2017) Coalition governments and party competition: Political
communication strategies of coalition parties. Political Science Research and Methods 5(2): 333–
349. https://doi.org/10.1017/psrm.2015.56
Sartori G (1976) Parties and party systems: A framework for analysis. Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge.
Saunes IS, Vrangbæk K, Byrkjeflot H, Jervelund SS, Birk HO, Tynkkynen LK,
Keskimäki I, Sigurgeirsdóttir S, Janlöv N, Ramsberg J, Hernández-Quevedo C, Merkur S, Sagan
A, Karanikolos M (2022) Nordic responses to Covid-19: Governance and policy measures in the
early phases of the pandemic. Health policy 126(5): 418–426.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.healthpol.2021.08.011
Shepsle KA (1979) Institutional arrangements and equilibrium in multidimensional
voting models. American Journal of Political Science 23(1): 27–59.
https://doi.org/10.2307/2110770
Shvetsova O, Zhirnov A, VanDusky-Allen J, Adeel AB, Catalano M, Catalano O,
Giannelli F, Muftuoglu E, Riggs T, Sezgin MH, Tahir N, Zhao T (2020) Institutional origins of
protective COVID-19 public health policy responses: informational and authority redundancies
and policy stringency. Journal of Political Institutions and Political Economy 1(4): 585-613.
https://doi.org/10.1561/113.00000023
77
Shvetsova O, VanDusky-Allen J, Zhirnov A, Adeel AB, Catalano M, Catalano O,
Giannelli F, Muftuoglu E, Rosenberg D, Sezgin MH, Zhao T (2021) Federal institutions and
strategic policy responses to COVID-19 pandemic. Frontiers in Political Science 3.
https://doi.org/10.3389/fpos.2021.631363
Shvetsova O, Zhirnov A, Adeel AB et al (2022) Protective Policy Index (PPI) global
dataset of origins and stringency of COVID 19 mitigation policies. Sci Data 9, 319.
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-022-01437-9
Socialstyrelsen. Nordic public health preparedness agreement.
https://www.socialstyrelsen.se/globalassets/sharepoint-dokument/dokument-
webb/ovrigt/nordiskt-halsoberedskapsavtal---engelska.pdf Accessed 30 Oct 2022
Spiteri G, Fielding J, Diercke M, Campese C, Enouf V, Gaymard A, Bella A,
Sognamiglio P, Sierra Moros MJ, Riutort AN, Demina YV, Mahieu R, Broas M, Bengnér M,
Buda S, Schilling J, Filleul L, Lepoutre A, Saura C, Mailles A, … Ciancio BC (2020) First cases
of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in the WHO European Region, 24 January to 21
February 2020. Euro surveillance: bulletin Europeen sur les maladies transmissibles = European
communicable disease bulletin 25(9): 2000178. https://doi.org/10.2807/1560-
7917.ES.2020.25.9.2000178
Stuckler D, Reeves A, Loopstra R, Karanikolos M, McKee M (2017) Austerity and
health: the impact in the UK and Europe. European Journal of Public Health, 27(suppl_4):18–21.
https://doi.org/10.1093/eurpub/ckx167
Tiirinki H, Tynkkynen LK, Sovala M, Atkins S, Koivusalo M, Rautiainen P, Jormanainen
V, Keskimäki I (2020) COVID-19 pandemic in Finland - Preliminary analysis on health system
78
response and economic consequences. Health policy and technology 9(4): 649–662.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hlpt.2020.08.005
Tsebelis G (1995) Decision making in political systems: veto players in presidentialism,
parliamentarism, multicameralism and multipartyism. British Journal of Political Science 25(3):
289–325. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007123400007225
Tsebelis G, Money J (1997) Bicameralism. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Walker A, Vihta KD, Gethings O, Pritchard E, Jones J, House T, Bell I, Bell JI, Newton
JN, Farrar J, Diamond I, Studley R, Rourke E, Hay J, Hopkins S, Crook D, Peto T, Matthews P
C, Eyre DW, … Pouwels KB (2021) Tracking the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 Alpha Variant in
the United Kingdom. New England Journal of Medicine 385(27): 2582–2585.
https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMc2103227
World Health Organization, Geneva. https://covid19.who.int/ . Accessed 21 Nov 2022
