This year, the world experienced a global crisis unlike anything seen in generations. The COVID-19 pandemic is indiscriminate and unprecedented in scale, and has exposed pervasive weaknesses in health systems, emergency preparedness and multilateral coordination. Though the coronavirus is primarily a health issue, it remains a multidimensional crisis.
Owing to the sheer complexity of the pandemic’s fallout, policymakers at all levels have been confronted with unprecedented challenges. Governments have had to strike a balance between protecting lives and livelihoods, and maintaining fiscal space and avoiding higher debt burdens. During these extraordinary times, the trade-offs between speed, accuracy and effectiveness in policy-making have become widely apparent.
Though most national governments have responded to the crisis in a similar overall fashion, the effectiveness of policies has varied widely across countries, reflecting differences in political leadership, institutional capacity, decision-making processes and other factors. Robust and inclusive health-care systems, emergency preparedness and social safety nets have all played a critical role. In the future, these systems, along with sound macroeconomic policy and available fiscal space, will allow countries to respond faster and more effectively to similar shocks.