Introduction: The Case of COVID-19

Like the proverbial blind folk encountering an elephant and describing very different aspects of the same animal, the first stages of coming to grips with the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on public administration are necessarily descriptive and incomplete. The profound impact of the pandemic is clear, but much work remains to identify the extent and nuances of these impacts on subnational governance.

Following the analysis of insights from interviews with thirty local U.S. leaders published in the first issue of State and Local Government Review this year (Benton, Rissler, and Wagner 2020), this issue includes two additional impressions of the COVID-19 elephant and its impacts. Focusing on the U.S. and the theme of shifts in federalism engaged by Kettl (2020), McDonald, Goodman and Hatch drill down to the interaction between state and local governments. Grounding their analysis in the context of existing emergency response systems they analyze the use of executive orders by state governors and the impact this had on local government action in the midst of a crisis.

In order to underscore the global scope and impact of the pandemic, alongside the McDonald piece, this issue includes a short “dispatch” length summary by Shringare and Fernandes of state and local efforts in India’s response to pandemic. Their research contributes to a growing list of country or regional case studies such as ones focused on Australia (Moloney and Moloney 2020) and Latin America (Ramírez de la Cruz et al. 2020). This Governance Matters pairing provides insight on the two countries with the largest burden of COVID-19 cases. In India, as this introduction goes to press, cases were approaching 10 million and deaths surpassed 144,000 while the U.S., with 17 million cases and more than 300,000 deaths, continues to hold the lamentable distinction of global leader in both categories (Washington Post 2020). The two perspectives both argue that there is a need to appreciate the flexibility of responses at lower levels of governance and consider the tradeoffs of imposing a more centralized response at the national (in the case of India) or state level (in the case of the United States). Alongside the work of mapping a forward-looking research agenda, such as that suggested by Bowman et al. (2020) in this same issue of State and Local Government Review, these insights are important continued steps toward supporting the admirable front-line administrators confronting the crisis across the globe.

Finally, a broader note about Governance Matters as a section. With a special issue slated for the Review’s December 2020 issue and a new editorial vision guiding the 2021 volume, this installment of the Governance Matters section will be the last. Thank you to the many authors, reviewers and readers who made this space a unique and useful space for practitioner-oriented inquiry and dialogue since 2009.