The COVID-19 pandemic has shown where the cracks lie in the inter-related levels of global, national and local governance. Good governance is crucial in responding to a crisis. But it’s a precious commodity that, if mishandled, has consequences as deadly as those it seeks to resolve.

For example, in 1665 when the Great Plague swept England, Londoners were asked by authorities to kill cats and dogs, and fill the rooms of the ill with tobacco smoke. These moves were famously counter-productive, not only choking the afflicted, but crucially allowing free-from-harm rats to multiply and thereby spread the plague bacteria via the fleas that lived on them.

This plague only stopped when most of London fortuitously burnt down the following year. Governance has moved on since the times of Restoration England, but its coordination will be crucial to passing the test of COVID-19.

Global governance

The COVID-19 pandemic has shown the need for a coordinated global response, but underscored that the nation-state remains the best (and perhaps only) entity with the capacity to address this challenge.

This is especially so given the inadequacy of global health governance, with the World Health Organisation (WHO) slow to act in declaring a global pandemic, and unable to coordinate key states in their responses. Part of the reason for this stems from the well-publicised fact that the WHO was reluctant to criticise China, which is a major donor.

But, there’s a larger issue of key donors from the “Global North” starving the institution of funding for decades, leaving it poorly placed to lead any global response, and having to instead resort to pleading with countries to increase testing and adopt social distancing measures.

Moreover, we should remember that the pandemic is occurring at a time of a populist backlash against global governance, with key states shunning global cooperation and attempts to find global solutions to global problems.

Instead, we’ve seen states retreating behind their borders and adopting “beggar-thy-neighbour” policies such as export bans on crucial medical equipment, and the redirection of medical supplies.

Crises affect politics in strange ways, making what was politically unthinkable only a fortnight ago, now imperative. With the absence of a coordinated global response, we’re seeing a return from “governance” to “government” – a sharp reversal of the orthodoxy of the past four decades.

As with the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) of 2008 and after, COVID-19 has seen a sudden return to the “Big Government” of the postwar years; the type of government that Ronald Reagan said was the problem, and not the solution.

The now-recovered Boris Johnson’s support for the National Health Service (NHS) in the United Kingdom, and his generous welfare for the recently unemployed, make him look like an Incredible Hulk version of postwar UK Labour prime minister Clement Attlee.

Scott Morrison and Josh Frydenberg, who had long ridiculed Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan’s pump-priming response to the GFC, now look like Gough Whitlam on steroids with their open cheque books.

But beyond the countries of the developed Global North (Australia is an honorary member of this informal club), we need to recognise that conflict and crisis-affected environments, and countries with other development challenges, are less likely to be able to address the threats posed by COVID-19. Unless this is recognised, COVID-19 will continue to affect us all well after Australia has loosened its distancing laws. This is because developing and post-conflict countries often lack sufficient resources, capacity and resilience to respond to ongoing or new threats.

Health systems, including disease surveillance, are often inadequate, and there can be many vulnerable people with inadequate access to food and healthcare, sometimes living in overcrowded and unsanitary refugee and displacement camps or city slums. It’s difficult to imagine how such places will cope when the healthcare systems and economies of the world’s richest countries are struggling.

The pandemic also lays bare the existing structural inequalities of the global economy perpetuated by neoliberal economic development policies that have weakened state capacities to respond to this global crisis.

The pandemic also lays bare the existing structural inequalities of the global economy perpetuated by neoliberal economic development policies that have weakened state capacities to respond to this global crisis.

Cuts to public sector spending through structural adjustment programs in the “Global South”, for example, have weakened state health systems. The bold and welcome public spending response that governments in countries in the Global North have been able to deliver is unlikely to be followed by most countries in the Global South.

For example, the wages relief, free childcare and loan relief are unlikely to be replicated in countries in Australia’s region, where, according to the International Labour Organisation, 93 per cent of workers in developing countries are classified as informal sector workers. Life-saving measures such as isolation and social distancing can mean, literally, death through starvation for those working for daily wages on the margins of the global economy.

Nor is this emphasis on the crisis in developing countries unrelated to us in Australia, for two reasons: firstly, an inability to control the spread of the virus in the Indo-Asia-Pacific will curb Australians’ ability to move internationally for some time; secondly, we have vulnerable populations within our own borders, including Indigenous people, the homeless and those in insecure housing, who are also at risk as opportunities for the casualised workforce contract, and social provisions weaken for those excluded from relief packages.

Governance in Australia

At the domestic level, responding to the crisis has also revealed some of the cracks in governance in Australia.

For Australia, the COVID-19 crisis highlights the limitations of a 19th-century constitution in the 21st century. The lack of uniformity between states and territories in their responses to COVID-19 has put at risk the strategy of “flattening the curve”, and the delays created by the need to consult across levels of government have at times compromised the capacity of the institutions of government to respond to the crisis with the required urgency.

The creation of the National Cabinet – not a cabinet in the traditional sense – but effectively a rebadging of COAG, has to some extent mitigated these concerns.

Crises are also opportunities, as the old cliche has it, and usually they’re a centraliser’s dream. From the exigencies of World War II to the Eurozone crisis, the result is usually more centralisation of decision-making, which is not often quickly wound back.

For Australia, the COVID-19 crisis might reopen an old argument in a new guise: Does this suggest we should abolish the states? But the states have themselves proved to be an effective actor, especially given their competencies over health and education. Errors such as the Ruby Princess have occurred where the boundaries of competence, and responsibility, between state and federal governments were unclear and poorly coordinated.

Particularly in the absence of a well-funded and coordinated global response, effective national leadership is crucial during this pandemic. But not all leaders have the temperament, cognitive openness, negotiation skill, administrative competence, political priorities, and empathy required to minimise harm to their citizens and instil business confidence.

Support for leaders usually goes up in situations of national and international crisis – the question is how quickly these ratings come down, and with what electoral consequences. Notwithstanding current high poll ratings for world leaders (Brazil’s COVID-denying Jair Bolsonaro excepted), leadership failings measured by death counts are obvious among right-wing populist regimes’ slow response to the initial outbreak and spread of the virus.

On the positive side, the crisis seems to have restored some of the political faith in experts (with the notable exception of the US), whereas in the previous decade the populist tenor of politics in the Global North mitigated against heeding their advice.

At what price: Those most at risk need protection from the social and economic costs of the policy response to the virus.

Policy recommendations

At the global level, the current crisis highlights the need for a well-funded and independent WHO, to not only sound the alarm on future global health emergencies, but also to work with states to ensure they’re better prepared for them.

While such an outcome might seem unlikely in the era of populist attacks on global governance, one can hope that this is one of the lessons learnt from this crisis, and that the Australian government plays a full part in this.

Domestically, it’s also important that the most vulnerable and economically precarious in Australian society, including casual staff on contracts of less than 12 months, don’t fall through the cracks of relief packages.

To govern is to choose, as they say, but governments should assess the consequences of their actions against the wellbeing of the most at-risk from the social and economic costs of the policy response to the virus.

Good governance is crucial in a crisis if we’re not to go around acting out the 21st-century equivalent of murdering cats and dogs as Londoners did in 1665. We’re fortunate in Australia that our systems are robust and well-resourced, but this doesn’t mean that everyone will be protected as they should by the benefits of good government.

This article was jointly authored by politics and international relations academics in Monash's School of Social Sciences. Twitter: @MonashPolsIR, @MonashPolicy.