Multilevel governance in the first wave of Covid-19

This chapter discusses the multilevel governance reactions to Covid-19 using evidence from European countries in the first wave of the pandemic. We examine whether centralisation should necessarily follow a state of emergency and argue that decentralised governance can still allow for some degree of coordination, including pandemic plans within and even between countries. Coordination via these plans allows for a swift exchange of information on the characteristics of the pathogen, alongside the set-up of common standards to track its evolution and collect comparable data, and regulations to manage the actions of infected patients and prevent the spread of the disease further (including border closures and quarantines). We show evidence that centralisation when expertise is at the regional level can hamper information sharing and experimentation.