While the COVID-19 pandemic has hit different countries with varying intensity, responding to the crisis has presented an unprecedented challenge to most governments. In this context, evaluations provide critical tools to support real time sharing of lessons on what is working, what is not, what could work and for whom. This paper draws lessons from evaluations that governments have carried out themselves of their COVID-19 responses. It provides a synthesis of the evidence from 67 such evaluations produced in OECD countries during the first 15 months of the pandemic. These first evaluations show that many governments came to similar conclusions, and allow us to identify important insights that can feed into ongoing policy responses to the crisis - as well as increase future resilience.

Did evaluation meet the challenges of the COVID-19 crisis? How were evaluation practices, architectures, and values affected? Policy Evaluation in the Era of COVID-19 is the first to offer a broad canvas that explores government responses and ideas to tackle the challenges that evaluation practice faces in preparing for the next global crisis. Practitioners and established academic experts in the field of policy evaluation present a sophisticated synthesis of institutional, national, and disciplinary perspectives, with insights drawn from developments in Australia, Canada and the UK, as well as the UN. Contributors examine the impacts of evaluation on socioeconomic recovery planning, government innovations in pivoting internal operations to address the crisis, and the role of parliamentary and audit institutions during the pandemic. Chapters also example the Sustainable Development Goals, and the inadequacy of human rights-based approaches in evaluation, while examining the imperative proposed by some authors that it is time that we take seriously the call for substantial transformation. Written in a clear and accessible style, Policy Evaluation in the Era of COVID-19 offers a much-needed insight on the role evaluation played during this unique and critical juncture in history.

As countries seek to learn from the COVID-19 crisis and increase their resilience for the future, evaluations are important tools to understand what worked or not, why and for whom. This report is the first of its kind. It evaluates Luxembourg’s responses to the COVID-19 crisis in terms of risk preparedness, crisis management, as well as public health, education, economic and fiscal, and social and labour market policies.

This report builds on the OECD work on “government evaluations of COVID-19 responses”. It evaluates Belgium’s responses to the pandemic in terms of risk preparedness, crisis management, as well as public health, education, economic and fiscal, and social and labour market policies.

This book explores the reasons behind the variation in national responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. In doing so, it furthers the policy studies scholarship through an examination of the effects of policy styles on national responses to the pandemic. Despite governments being faced with the same threat, significant variation in national responses, frequently of contradictory nature, has been observed. Implications about responses inform a broader class of crises beyond this specific context. The authors argue that trust in government interacts with policy styles resulting in different responses and that the acute turbulence, uncertainty, and urgency of crises complicate the ability of policymakers to make sense of the problem. Finally, the book posits that unless there is high trust between society and the state, a decentralized response will likely be disastrous and concludes that while national responses to crises aim to save lives, they also serve to project political power and protect the status quo. This text will be of key interest to scholars and students of public policy, public administration, political science, sociology, public health, and crisis management/disaster management studies.

This book examines how governments around the world responded to the health emergency created by the COVID-19 pandemic. Before vaccines became available, non-medical interventions were the main means to protect the public. Non-medical interventions were put in place by governments as public health policies. In every nation, politicians and governments faced a choice situation, and worldwide, they made different choices. Public health policies came at a price, in economic, social, and ultimately electoral costs to the political incumbents. The book discusses differences in governments’ policy efforts to mitigate the virus spread. The authors conduct in-depth analysis of country-cases from Africa, North and South America, Asia, and Europe. They also offer small-n- comparative analyses as well as report global patterns and trends of governments’ responsiveness to the medical emergency. It will appeal to all those interested in public policy, health policy and governance.