A Call for Action: Public Administration, Public Policy, and Public Health Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic

• Author: Stephanie P. Newbold,Marc Holzer
• Published date: 01 August 2020
• Date: 01 August 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0275074020941666
• Subject Matter: Introduction

https://doi.org/10.1177/0275074020941666

American Review of Public Administration

2020, Vol. 50(6-7) 450 –454

© The Author(s) 2020

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DOI: 10.1177/0275074020941666

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Introduction

The American Review of Public Administration (ARPA), a

leading Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) journal in the

field, called for commentaries on the relationships between

the practice of public administration and the field of public

health in the context of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. In

particular, and on a comparative basis in terms of country-

level responses in China, South Korea, and throughout the

world, we were interested in hosting a practitioner–academic

dialogue that addressed significant lessons going forward

including the following:

 Have tensions between political leaders and adminis-

trative professionals limited the efficacy of public

health initiatives?

 Have strategic planning and management systems

proven adequate to address this pandemic? What are

the elements of such processes that must be improved

to avert future crises?

 To what extent is the response to the crisis driven by

evidence-based decisions? Or, are factors such as

political priorities, idiosyncratic beliefs, and feelings

of being invulnerable effectively conflicting with sci-

ence-based approaches?

 Are too few public servants willing to “speak truth to

power” in terms of their messaging to the public? To

what extent has the bureaucracy evidenced leadership

in the crisis?

 Are government’s budgeting and fiscal management

systems flexible enough for the short-term responses

necessary in a pandemic situation?

 Have capacity-building and service-delivery perfor-

mance measures been evident in planning for such

an epidemic? Would a broader range of measures,

and the data necessary to populate them, have been

advantageous?

 Were public organizations adequately and compre-

hensively modeling the necessary plans, supply

chains, and resources for a pandemic? Were they suf-

ficiently and safely staffed at the federal, state, and

municipal levels for such a disaster response?

Authors were encouraged to reflect on and draw upon

their experiences during the coronavirus epidemic and over

the course of their careers.

ARPA’s call for commentaries resulted in the acceptance

of 46 peer-reviewed manuscripts. As a body of knowledge,

they define a strategic approach any government can adapt

to confront this or future such situations. We have orga-

nized this special issue within eight threads that are appar-

ent within these commentaries and across geographical

locations.

The contributions within this issue are not simply case

studies. Although they draw upon case experiences, they

draw as deeply from the literature of public administration,

public management, public policy, public health, leadership,

and government in general. As such, they place the public

sector’s responses in the context of capacity building over

more than a century, offering validation for the complexity of

governmental planning, systems development, and evidence-

based decision making. Effective responses to COVID-19

have underscored the interdependence of politics and admin-

istration, of data and determination, of scientific research,

and of systems for applying that research to government’s

responsibilities to safeguard public health.

Step 1: Recognizing the Institutional

Responsibilities and Obligations of

the Administrative State to the

Citizenry It Serves

Government has many missions. None is more important

than public health. Indeed, pandemics and less dramatic

public health issues have arguably devastated humanity to a

much greater extent that have wars over the course of

recorded human history.

The symposium opens with a discussion of public health

consequences of deconstructing the administrative state. In

a comprehensive analysis, Kate Tulenko and Dominique

Vervoort alert us to cracks in the U.S. public health system.

They flag public health fragmentation at all levels of gov-

ernment and assess systems through criteria set by the

Centers for Disease Control’s “Ten Essential Public Health

Services.” John Kirlin complements that analysis by identi-

fying shortcomings in planning for pandemics, emphasizing

a particular focus on the inadequacy of data systems and the

displacement of expert advice by the agendas of elected

officials, and concluding with recommendations for possi-

ble improvements.

941666ARPXXX10.1177/0275074020941666The American Review of Public AdministrationIntroduction

editorial2020

A Call for Action: Public Administration,

Public Policy, and Public Health Responses

to the COVID-19 Pandemic