The politics of scale in the coordinated management and emergency response to the COVID-19 pandemic

Introduction

There is a well-established field of research and set of institutional structures concerned with delivering coordinated management and emergency response (CMER) to natural (e.g., earthquakes, tsunamis) and human-made (e.g., terrorism, pandemics) crises (Canton, 2019). Networks of response agencies have detailed plans of action, with chains of command and rehearsed praxes for tackling crisis events. Yet how CMERs mobilize generally varies within and between jurisdictions, affecting how states respond in practice to crises. The differential robustness and effectiveness of CMERs have become highly apparent during the COVID-19 pandemic, with states enacting different approaches for delay and containment.

In this commentary, I compare the CMER pandemic responses in the United States and Ireland, which have varied due to their different governance architectures and scalar geographies of power. In particular, I draw upon a performative conception of scalar power which ‘approaches scale as a naturalized way of seeing the world’ that performatively enacts particular ‘scale effects’ (Kaiser and Nikiforova, 2008: 543; also, see Cohen and Harris, 2014). Such scale effects are performed through a series of repetitious acts that constitute ‘authoritative’ discourses and practices, which have the effect of normalizing specific CMER scalar configurations. The latter are typically framed in hierarchical terms by sovereign states, yet in practice scalar relations are influenced by diverse actors and actants—often transforming and mutating into ‘flatter’ structures of action during operational activities. These flatter scalar practices encourage power to remain ‘unstructured and moveable’ (Delaney, 2019: 9; also, see Latour, 2014), especially as CMERs are operationalized on the ground at the local and regional level. In some cases, real-time decision-making has the effect of ‘blurring’ scales and becoming ‘scale-less’ (i.e. when established scalar hierarchies are disrupted by operational needs and expertise).

The performative enactment of scale varies significantly in different political contexts. In the United States, CMER operates within a devolved system of governance, with power and decision-making over pandemic containment and delay measures remaining at the local and state scale. By contrast, CMER in Ireland has operated primarily at the national scale, reducing the decision-making power of local-scale actors and minimizing regional response capacity. Comparing the responses to COVID-19 in the US and Ireland therefore highlights the consequential effects that scalar politics have had in shaping CMER to public health crises across different jurisdictions.

The scalar effects on CMER in the United States

The federal system in the US creates a scalar framework of CMER organization where response to a crisis resides at the local and state scale, with the federal government only intervening if the crisis is national in scope or the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is invited to contribute by a state. As such, the US CMER system operates through a decentralization of power networks (Delaney, 2019). This is evident with respect to emergency response at the local and regional scales, wherein executive power is delegated to state-level, governmental agencies and is delivered through localized bodies, which have their own governance regimes. These scales of organization and action are consistently imagined as hierarchical but are often mobilized in a flatter decentralized manner through collective and devolved power that oscillates between scales. Thus, more symbiotic scalar relationships are developed to access knowledge, real-time information, and develop operational trust. These socially constructed scalar relations are performatively enacted through policy-making and structures such as the local or state Emergency Operation Centres (EOC), or via WebEOC. ¹ Although each state has its own political structures that can affect inter-scalar relationships, how EOCs and WebEOC work is organized within the National Incident Management System (NIMS) (FEMA, 2016). States can generally be observed as operating within established scalar frameworks but, at times, they perform as if other scales do not exist.

The US federal government typically frames its scalar actions in hierarchical terms through the repetitive enactment of its political authority. During the COVID-19 pandemic, these repetitive acts have construed a rather peculiar form of state biopower characterized by a discourse that is apparently framed around public health yet is primarily designed to protect economic interests and act as a demonstration of power for the upcoming US presidential election (Shapiro, 2020). Elements of this discourse have included US President Donald Trump’s eagerness to return to normality, the offering of dangerous medical advice, critique of the preparedness of the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention after Trump dismantled the office dedicated to Pandemic Management, and a mistaken belief that the ultimate power to end lockdowns resides with the White House (Prignano, 2020).

However, the governance architecture of the United States, as set out in the US Constitution, means that state governors retain the power to lift stay-at-home orders, not the President (Turley, 2020). The result has been a series of power plays, contradictory messages, variances in approaches across states, and a certain degree of disorganization in the enactment and lifting of containment and delay measures. For example, New York’s CMER to the pandemic was affected by political undercuts and conflicting advice emanating from different political scales (i.e. from the Governor’s and the Mayor’s offices) (Bekiempis, 2020). Conversely, the Governor of Montana declared a state of emergency on March 12, before there were any confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the state. In Montana, there was an emphasis on the power and responsibilities of both the Governor and individual mayors (Montana.Gov, 2020), demonstrating less hierarchical power dynamics with a blurring of spatial scales, thereby resulting in less conflict than in other states such as New York.

The scalar effects on CMER in Ireland

Under normal circumstances, the Irish CMER system operates locally, emanating upward in the chain of political authority only if the event is severe. Even whole island events such as the 2015–2016 winter storms and flooding, which resulted in a state of flood emergency for 2 months, did not trigger the national emergency protocol; instead, power and responsibility remained at the local scale. Here, power is splintered and dispersed across the CMER actors and actants, as well as within and between scales, as each activates their own plans to ensure needs are met. In this sense, it is similar to the US, though there is one key difference which has played out with the response to COVID-19—the national scale can assert full control over the CMER system. This eliminates providential will and power from the local and regional scale, centralizing control at the national scale. As a result, in contrast to the US, coordination and command is located in one source. In the case of COVID-19, this one source is the National Public Health Emergency Team (NPHET), which has been driving government decision-making concerning containment and delay measures as well as public health delivery in Ireland. By centralizing decision-making to NPHET, a technocratic body, party politics related to the response has largely been circumvented.

Due to the governance architecture of Ireland, there has been limited pushback or deviation at the local scale. Meanwhile, consistent messaging from NPHET, representatives of the Government, and national media broadcasters assert their authority to make decisions and act. However, Ireland demonstrates that even if power is centralized, it still devolves to lower scales, where actions are performed in practice and collective soft power is mobilized through encouraging community spirit and volunteerism. Police officers and postal workers delivered groceries and medication to those cocooning ² ; local businesses, NGOs, and volunteers have delivered food to the vulnerable; while Facebook and Twitter became platforms for local organization, later complemented by a Community Call Programme (Irish Government, 2020). The hubs of volunteers which self-organized via social media were thus able to transfer into structured local volunteer operations under the auspices of the local authority and central government, indicating a blurring of spatial scales once again. This is a powerful reaction to the stripping of local power by a centralized government, thereby illuminating the power of local actors in retaining and establishing community response networks. The local scale is performing an authoritative act simultaneously with, and adjacent to, the national government. They are performing contiguously with the national state by exhibiting the collective soft power of the local scale, albeit by ensuring that local initiatives follow national guidelines. The result has been a relatively harmonious pandemic response in Ireland with strong public support, all party backing, and little institutional or community resistance, in stark contrast to the US.

Conclusion

The governance architecture of a state and the way in which power is operationalized are both critical in shaping how coordinated management and emergency response are enacted within a political jurisdiction. Indeed, the comparison of the United States and Ireland reveals that it is important to take account of the scalar politics of CMER organization—not simply the political ideology of the government in power—to understand variances across and within jurisdictions as to how the crisis has been addressed. While in physical size and population, the US and Ireland are very different, it is possible to legitimately compare the organization and role of different scales of government in emergency response and their consequences. In the United States, the majority of states have ignored contradictory federal messages and employed their resources and knowledge to manage the COVID-19 pandemic. There is an element of real and imaginary power at play in this situation with the states using the power that the constitution provides while actively avoiding the rhetoric of the federal scale and its imagined sense of power and authority. By contrast, Ireland has centralized power within a technocratic body while retaining a harmonious response across scales by asserting authority and encouraging soft power.

The COVID-19 pandemic makes clear that there is a need to contextualize the analysis of CMER with respect to a multi-scalar understanding of governance, power, and politics. It is not simply a technocratic, instrumental response to crisis, but a nested set of institutionalized networks of people, processes, technologies, politics, histories, geographies, and cultures (Delaney, 2019). Through such a framing, it is possible to tease out and make sense of the reasons why state-led responses have been mobilized in the way that they have within jurisdictions, across scales and to undertake comparative analysis.