Intergovernmental veto points in crisis management: Italy and Spain facing the COVID-19 pandemic
Author | Davide Galli,Salvador Parrado |
Published date | 01 September 2021 |
Date | 01 September 2021 |
DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0020852320985925 |
Subject Matter | Special Issue: Testing the crisis: opportunity management and governance of the COVID-19 pandemic comparedGuest editors: Sabine Kuhlmann, Geert Bouckaert, Davide Galli, Renate Reiter and Steven Van HeckeArticles |
Article
International
Review of
Administrative
Sciences
Intergovernmental
veto points in crisis
management: Italy
and Spain facing the
COVID-19 pandemic
Salvador Parrado
National University of Distance Education (UNED), Spain
Davide Galli
Universita
`Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Italy
Abstract
Italy and Spain were the first countries affected by the shift of the pandemic epicentre
from east to west. The rapid spread of the virus in allegedly similar social settings, the
relatively high numbers of cases and casualties, and the adoption of drastic containment
measures were similar in the two countries during the first wave of the pandemic. Both
countries are enmeshed in an unstable political equilibrium at the centre, governed by
recently established national political coalitions that have continuously been called into
question and exposed to significant public debt. The two countries differ in the role of
the executive vis-a-vis the legislative, and the tensions between central coordination
and regional centrifugal forces. To improve the understanding of how the pandemic has
influenced decision-making and crisis management, this article explains the relevance of
institutional veto points, as well as differences between the two countries. There is
room to match coordination, policy capacity and shared accountability through more
collaborative governance.
Points for practitioners
Governing a transboundary crisis that involves different governmental levels is about
creating an effective coordination mechanism that clarifies responsibilities, avoiding
Corresponding author:
Davide Galli, Universita
`Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Via Emilia Parmense, 84 Piacenza, 29122, Italy.
Email: davide.galli@unicatt.it
International Review of Administrative
Sciences
!The Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/0020852320985925
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2021, Vol. 87(3) 576–592
those who may block decision-making processes (veto players) through being incentiv-
ized to do so due to the absence of adequate shared accountability systems. National
and regional managers should realize that the separation of territorial powers not
accompanied by political coordination jeopardizes policy capacity in both the short
and long term.
Keywords
accountability, COVID-19, Italy, Spain, veto points
Introduction
1
To address the health emergency created by COVID-19, many governments have
combined ordinary and extraordinary tools to implement decisions that affect the
lives of thousands of people (Bouckaert et al., 2020). In normal times, veto points
(Immergut, 1992) play roles in decision-making processes and their outputs. It is
expected that during crises, veto points, through the analytical framework used in
this article, can foster or hamper joint decision-making processes by different
governmental levels. This framework has been used to analyse health and welfare
reforms (Ha, 2008; Natali and Rhodes, 2004) and economic policy (MacIntyre,
2001); however, an application of the approach to crisis management in multi-level
polities is lacking.
We try to fill this gap by analysing four key moments of the pandemic response
during its first six months where the most severe lockdown measures were adopted
in several countries. This article attempts to answer the question of whether veto
points at different territorial levels of government played a role in slowing down or
changing the policy response. Italy and Spain are two multi-level polities that are
adequate for this analysis, with power in health decisions being shared between the
regions and central government, which increases the potential number of veto
points and veto players (Bonoli, 2001).
By focusing on four decision/veto points (the declaration of the state of emer-
gency, the adoption of lockdown measures, the definition of healthcare measures,
and the reopening and first economic measures) faced by the two countries during
COVID-19, we enquire about the potential to veto policy decisions during trans-
boundary crises. By using veto-point theory (Immergut, 1992), we highlight the
interplay between the national government (in charge of supervising the system)
and regional veto players (Tsebelis, 2011) in multi-level accountability arenas in
the face of crises.
After the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan in December 2019, Italy and Spain
were the first two European countries to be rapidly and extensively affected by the
pandemic. On 31 January 2020, both countries officially registered the first cases.
On the same day, the Italian government declared a state of emergency, while
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Parrado and Galli
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