Two routes to precarious success: Australia, New Zealand, COVID-19 and the politics of crisis governance

AuthorNicholas Bromfield,Allan McConnell
Published date01 September 2021
Date01 September 2021
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1177/0020852320972465
Article
International
Review of
Administrative
Sciences
Two routes to precarious
success: Australia, New
Zealand, COVID-19 and
the politics of crisis
governance
Nicholas Bromfield
University of Sydney, Australia
Allan McConnell
University of Sydney, Australia
Abstract
Australia and New Zealand are routinely presented as sharing more in common than the
federal and unitary systems separating them. As two modernising Antipodean settler
societies, their governing trajectories have embraced waves of public administration/
management reform. Shared pathways seem matched by their relative, although precar-
ious and fragile, early successes in the crisis challenges of COVID-19. This article
contextualises and examines one crucial point of separation: two very different crisis
governance routes to such outcomes. Australia’s federal variant of multi-level gover-
nance, more used to addressing diverse regional challenges than shared national threats,
has been characterised by an evolving balancing act of multi-jurisdictional agendas and
bureaucratic–political conflicts. By contrast, NewZealand’s unitary systemof governance,
well-versed in the centralisation of power, has produced lower levels of intergovernmen-
tal conflict. Our analysis of these differing pathways also makes a contribution to our
conceptual understanding of successful crisis governance.
Corresponding author:
Allan McConnell, Social Sciences Building, A02 Science Road, University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales
2006, Australia.
Email: allan.mcconnell@sydney.edu.au
International Review of Administrative
Sciences
!The Author(s) 2020
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/0020852320972465
journals.sagepub.com/home/ras
2021, Vol.87(3) 518–535
Points for practitioners
Administrative arrangements based around federal or unitary systems are both qui te
capable of contributing to successful outcomes. Essential for both are inclusive crisis
discussions that are consistent with the norms of the respective systems. Success can
be fragile, especially in a pandemic. Appropriate inclusive discussions can facilitate
responses to cascading crisis developments and act as a safeguard against complacency.
Keywords
coronavirus, crisis management, public administration, public management
Introduction
1
The global pandemic stemming from COVID-19 in the year 2020 is a crisis per-
sonified. It exhibits classic crisis ingredients of high and cascading threats, deep
levels of uncertainty about their impact, and exceptional time pressures for action
(Weible et al., 2020). It is also an exemplar of transboundary crises, the ‘ultimate
nightmare’ of crisis managers (Boin, 2019: 95), where volatile and interlinked
threats cascade across national borders.
All countries have faced shared but unique challenges in shifting from routine to
crisis governance mode, with varying degrees of success (and failure) in containing
the virus and minimising damage to their economies. Australia and New Zealand
are two particularly interesting cases. They are routinely presented as ‘most sim-
ilar’ comparisons, sharing more in common than the federal and unitary systems
separating them. As two modernising Antipodean settler societies, their governing
trajectories have embraced waves of public administration/management reform
amid struggles to address the poor health outcomes and life chances of First
Nations peoples. Shared pathways seem matched by their relative, though precar-
ious and fragile, success in the crisis challenges of COVID-19. By early June 2020,
Australia, with a population of 25 million, had 7200 cases, 102 deaths and only a
handful of new infections per day; some three months later in mid-September, a
second wave in the state of Victoria and ongoing lower levels of infection through-
out Australia had increased the figures to 26,942 cases and 854 deaths – still
placing it in the lowest quartile of global deaths per capita.
2
In early June, New
Zealand, with a population of just under 5 million, had 1500 cases and 22 deaths,
and had declared the country as entirely free of the virus (Johns Hopkins
University, no date). A small number of infections from overseas travellers con-
tinued but there was no community transmission until early August, with a highly
unexpected and unexplained nine new cases. By mid-September, the new total was
1815 and 25 deaths.
The seeds of three particularly interesting issues germinate here around explain-
ing different forms of successful governance, the limits of governance in being able
519
Bromfield and McConnell

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