Policy preferences in response to negative economic prospects of COVID‐19: A survey‐experiment among local politicians in four European countries
| Published date | 01 June 2022 |
| Author | Joris Voet |
| Date | 01 June 2022 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/padm.12729 |
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Policy preferences in response to negative
economic prospects of COVID-19:
A survey-experiment among local
politicians in four European countries
Joris van der Voet
Institute of Public Administration, Leiden
University, Leiden, The Netherlands
Correspondence
Joris van der Voet, Institute of Public
Administration, Leiden University, Leiden,
The Netherlands.
Email: j.van.der.voet@fgga.leidenuniv.nl
Abstract
This study investigates how the negative economic pros-
pects of the COVID-19 pandemic affect local government
politicians' policy preferences in the Netherlands, the
United Kingdom, Switzerland, and Spain. The study exam-
ines to what extent politicians prefer increasing the role of
government (directive state), transferring public tasks to pri-
vate sector organizations (hollow state), transferring public
tasks to third sector organizations (communitarian state), or
downsizing and reducing the role of government without
transferring tasks (coping state). The experiment primes
decision-makers on the pandemic's negative financial and
economic prospects vis-à-vis its impact on health and well-
being. When negative economic prospects are emphasized,
the study finds decreased preferences for a directive state
and increased preferences for a coping state. The study
concludes that how decision-makers interpret the nature of
a crisis determines their preferred response: An emphasis
on the negative economic prospects of the COVID-19 pan-
demic is likely to increase preferences for renewed policies
of austerity.
Received: 11 August 2020 Revised: 21 February 2021 Accepted: 22 February 2021
DOI: 10.1111/padm.12729
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which
permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no
modifications or adaptations are made.
© 2021 The Authors. Public Administration published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
356 Public Admin. 2022;100:356–374.
wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/padm
1|INTRODUCTION
The COVID-19 pandemic confronts public administrations around the world with a “multilayered crisis.”The pan-
demic constitutes a health crisis, as evidenced by increased demands on health care systems and high levels of fatali-
ties (Entress et al., 2020; WHO, 2020). The pandemic can also be characterized as a social or humanitarian crisis
(Cepiku et al., 2020), in which constituents of public administrations experience a wide range of negative conse-
quences concerning for instance well-being, opportunities for employment and education, social cohesion, and men-
tal health. An emerging line of public administration scholarship points in particular to social inequities that
characterize the distribution of such negative consequences (Gaynor & Wilson, 2020; Martin-Howard &
Farmbry, 2020; Sancino et al., 2020; Wright & Merritt, 2020). The pandemic is also expected to set in motion a
global recession through the constraints that the pandemic—as well as policy measures taken to contain the spread
of the virus—places on the economy of affected countries. As a consequence, the pandemic has pronounced finan-
cial and fiscal consequences for public administrations (Maher et al., 2020; Wilkins et al., 2020).
Initial policy responses of national governments around the world have consisted of unprecedented fiscal, mone-
tary, and macro-financial measures to limit the human and economic impacts of the pandemic (for a detailed over-
view, see: IMF, 2020). However, subnational governments are argued to be “at the forefront of the COVID-19
health crisis and its social and economic consequences”(OECD, 2020) as they have pronounced responsibilities in
the policy domains of health and social welfare, as well as the local economy. Furthermore, local governments are
expected to experience a scissors effect, brought on by a decrease in financial revenue and a simultaneous increase
in expenditure. For instance, after the 2008 financial crisis, social protection spending by local governments in
European countries increased by 6.4% in 2009 and by 3.5% in 2010 (OECD, 2020). This forces local government
decision-makers to make “hard choices”concerning the continuation of public services and balancing the budget
(Cepiku et al., 2016; Levine, 1978,1979; Raudla et al., 2015; Van der Voet, 2019). As with prior economic shocks,
the anticipated negative economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic again make cutback management a key issue
for political decision-making as well as for public administration scholarship.
In the wake of economic recessions in the 1970s and the 2008 financial crisis, public administration researchers
have intensively examined processes of austerity management, organizational decline, and cutback management
(Bozeman, 2010; Cepiku et al., 2016; Pandey, 2010; Schmidt et al., 2017). This had led to a range of concepts and
typologies that have been used to characterize the responses of decision-makers, including proportional versus
targeted strategies (Levine, 1978; Raudla et al., 2015) and open versus closed strategies (Van der Voet, 2019). An
alternative typology is put forward in Lodge and Hood's (2012) framework of the directive, hollow, communitarian,
and coping state. As will be outlined more extensively in the following section, the directive state is characterized by
an increase of public expenditure and government intervention, whereas the other approaches consist of the privati-
zation of public tasks to the private sector (hollow state), the transfer of state responsibilities to nonprofit, volunteer,
and charity organizations (communitarian state), and the reduction of public expenditure and government interven-
tion without replacement by private or third sector (coping state). As discussed by Cepiku et al. (2016), this frame-
work may be utilized to examine policy responses to economic downturn, as past external shocks have shown that
decision-makers are likely to update their preferences in response to an economic recession (Lodge & Hood, 2012).
In this article, the framework by Lodge and Hood (2012) is utilized to examine the impact of the negative eco-
nomic prospects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the policy preferences of local politicians. Lodge and Hood (2012)
show that, in response to the 2008 economic recession, substantial variation can be witnessed between OECD
countries. These differences may be interpreted as originating from different degrees to which the countries were
afflicted by the economic recession, as well as differences in administrative systems and historical trajectories of
administrative reform (Hammerschmid et al., 2016; Pollitt & Bouckaert, 2017). The study therefore examines and
compares political decision-makers in four European countries: the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Switzerland,
and Spain. In examining variation in the policy preferences of politicians on the individual level of analysis, explor-
ative attention is given to how policy preferences in response to negative economic prospects are related to
van der VOET 357
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