Coordinating Nations: Why Australia Trumped Canada’s COVID-19 Pandemic Response

Abstract

This thesis investigates factors that determined national variation of policy response in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada and Australia, and what led to response effectiveness. I analyze response effectiveness with an outcome variable – response performance – that I measure by: (1) How prepared they were for a pandemic, (2) How rapidly the country could reduce R naught—the reproduction rate— to safer levels in the first wave, (3) The ability to deploy adequate health care resources such as medical equipment and personnel, (4) The ability to limit the rate of infection in subsequent waves, (5) Maintenance of ICU capacities and whether or not they became overwhelmed and, (6) Whether or not the government was able to protect livelihoods and protect people from falling into poverty. I draw mostly on qualitative data, combined with a small quantitative analysis on polarization, to defend my hypothesis that the character of the national coordination system accounted for observed differences in performance between Canada and Australia. More specifically, I hypothesize that performance response is improved by: (1) Introducing effective new government agencies, (2) Devising an effective response monitoring system, (3) Less division of responsibility for health between national and subnational governments, and (4) Preparedness. In the introduction I give a timeline of daily new positive cases per million people in each country to give an overview of trends in the spread of the disease. In chapter 2, I then analyze similarities and differences in political systems, political party competition and polarization. Chapters 3 and 4 serve to investigate Canada and Australia’s responses to the coronavirus-19 pandemic by observing pandemic response plans, coordination structures, responsibilities of national and subnational governments, the pandemic’s impact on public health, as well as the socio-economic impacts of the pandemic. I conclude the study with a comparison of these areas of research – with an emphasis on variations in coordination structures in the two countries.