ABSTRACT

The COVID-19 multidimensional crisis poses a formidable challenge for human society as it is simultaneously and globally damaging the public health, the economic activity and the social wellbeing. The complexity and severity of this crisis has revealed the weaknesses and heterogeneities of States’ capacities to respond to the global pandemic. In this article, we raise the important question about which type of State capacity has been more effective for dealing with the negative effects of the pandemic. Our research proposes a hierarchical cluster analysis of countries that distinguishes three dimensions of the crisis (the health, the economic and the social crises) and measures both the States’ efforts (the ‘inputs’) for containing these crises, and the corresponding effects (the ‘outputs’) that result from the previous inputs. We classify 99 countries worldwide into four groups in 2020. Our results reveal that there is no simple ‘linear’ representation of the COVID-19 multi-crises in terms of State capacity (each cluster of countries has its own and specific State characteristics and crisis effects). We thus reject the hypothesis that strong State capacity was a sine qua non condition for tackling the negative effects of the COVID-19 multi-crises during the first phase of the pandemic. In the end, the global emergency has emphasized the need to rethink the research on State capacity as the previous theoretical constructions have been unable to explain the significative international differences in terms of the public performances in minimizing the negative effects of the pandemic.

摘要

COVID-19 多维危机对人类社会构成了巨大挑战，因为它同时在全球范围内损害公共卫生、经济活动和社会福祉。这场危机的复杂性和严重性揭示了各国应对全球大流行病能力的弱点和异质性。在本文中，我们提出了一个重要问题，即哪种类型的国家能力更有效地应对大流行的负面影响。我们的研究建议对国家进行分层聚类分析，区分危机的三个维度（健康、经济和社会危机），并衡量各国为遏制这些危机所做的努力（“投入”）以及相应的影响（由先前输入产生的“输出”）。我们在 2020 年将全球 99 个国家分为四组。我们的结果表明，就国家能力而言，COVID-19 多重危机没有简单的“线性”表示（每个国家集群都有自己和特定的国家特征和危机影响）。因此，我们拒绝认为强大的国家能力是在大流行的第一阶段应对 COVID-19 多重危机的负面影响的必要条件。最后，全球紧急情况强调了重新思考国家能力研究的必要性，因为先前的理论构建已无法解释在将大流行的负面影响最小化方面的公共表现方面的显着国际差异。