Has any country's government concluded they need more decentralization to fight Covid-19 or future pandemics?

Question

Somewhat predictably, China has blamed their initial problems in responding to Covid-19 to decentralization and poor decisions from regional authorities:

The rare admission, from Director of China's National Health Commission Li Bin, comes after sustained criticism abroad of China's early response. [...]

Mr Li told journalists the pandemic was a significant challenge for China's governance, and that it exposed "the weak links in how we address major epidemic and the public health system." [...]

Li Bin said the commission would fix the problems by centralising its systems and making better use of big data and artificial intelligence, building on many of the leadership's longstanding objectives.

[...] Several provincial and local officials from the ruling Communist Party have been sacked but no senior member of the Party has been punished.

Beijing has not responded to calls to ease censorship and state control of the media.

I suspect this sounds almost like a rhetorical question, but has any country's government said that they should fight this or future pandemics in the opposite way, i.e. by more decentralized decision making?

Answer 1

Arguably, the United States of America has. Sort of. It's confusing.

The federal government, or rather the president and some of his cabinet, has largely left the response up to individual states. It's less of a conclusion, and more a result of chaos and denial at the Federal level.

It is difficult to write this up in a neutral tone, to find sources with a neutral tone, or to even determine what the official federal response is. Federal response has been chaotic and contradictory and the conduct of the president has been appalling. I live in the US. This is not an abstract answer.

An example of this confusion is the president's tendency to make sweeping declarations only to rescind them the next day. For example, the president declared "total authority" over the states re-opening plans, and then the next day he "authorized" the states to come up with their own plans. He has neither power.

Another example is confusion about who is in charge. There is an official White House Coronavirus Task Force lead by Vice President Pence and Dr. Brix. Jared Kushner leads a "shadow" task force. They often conflict with each other. Jared Kushner has no experience in disaster managment; he is the president's son-in-law.

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The federal government has taken some actions.

• Jan 31, declared a public health emergency.
• Feb 2, issued a travel ban on China.
• March 13, declared a national emergency.
• March 16, advised against groups of more than 10 people.
• March 19, advised against international travel.

WHO recommends against blanket travel and trade bans as they "may interrupt needed aid and technical support, may disrupt businesses, and may have negative social and economic effects on the affected countries".

In other areas they have opted to have the states handle disaster response usually handled by the federal government, often with no warning, and while the states and companies are pleading for help.

• Jared Kushner, the leader of a coronavirus task force, stated that "the notion of the federal stockpile was it's supposed to be our stockpile... it's not supposed to be states' stockpiles that they then use" in contrast to the stated goal of the stockpile. The stated goal was then changed to match Kushner's statement.
• The president has been reluctant to use the Defense Production Act to help medical production, but then using it to force meat packing plants to remain open.
• The president encouraging protests against state lock-down orders, orders which often agree with federal policy.
• The president's transactional view of federal disaster response, "It's a two-way street. [The states] have to treat us well, also. They can't say, 'Oh, gee, we should get this, we should get that.'"
• Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell suggested allowing states to go bankrupt (currently they cannot) rather than giving federal financial support usual for a disaster.
• The president suddenly cut funding for the World Health Organization accusing it of bias and responding poorly to the pandemic.
• The CDC has the power to "detain, medically examine, and release persons... traveling between states who are suspected of carrying these communicable diseases", but so far has declined to use it. Instead, individual states, and even a county, have been setting up a patchwork of checkpoints.

There is pattern of reluctance to coordinate procurement and distribution of vital supplies, for issuing clear guidelines for state closures and reopening, and for making these policies national. There is also a pattern of using federal aid as a carrot and stick to pursue agendas against certain states and punishing perceived political enemies.

This is based on no evidence, but political ideology. It is in contrast to previous federal disaster responses leaving state and local governments scrambling. And it is in stark contrast to expert advice, both inside and outside the federal government. Dr. Brix, White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator, Dr. Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and Dr. Redfield, Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have all contradicted many of the president's decisions, including the need for federal coordination.

While there was some initial rapid response from Congress, they are quickly falling back into partisan deadlock. Senate Majority Leader McConnell has stated the Senate will focus on confirming lifetime judicial appointments, not coronavirus work. The Republican party is in danger of losing control of both the Senate and the presidency at the end of the year.

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This has resulted in high profile, public arguments between the president and governors over federal vs state response and responsibility. For example, between President Trump and New York Governor Cuomo. New York is one of the hardest hit states. It has also been a subject of the president's ire prior to the virus.

Some state governors have then allowed the response to further devolve to their cities and counties, either explicitly or through inaction, and often at odds. For example, currently the state of South Dakota has largely downplayed the virus, while Native American tribes within its borders have not. They are currently at odds over their policies.

In response, many states are recognizing that the virus respects no borders. They're at risk of competing against each other for scarce resources and driving up the price. They must coordinate. With the federal government abdicating leadership, they are banding together into compacts to coordinate their plans, particularly about how and when to ease restrictions. For example, the Western States Pact and the Midwestern Governors Regional Pact and the Eastern states Multi-State Council.

The result is a state-by-state, sometimes city-by-city, patchwork of responses. Every state has declared a state of emergency and nearly all have some sort of stay at home order. As of this writing, nationally the number of cases and death toll continues to rise steadily.

Four states never issued a stay-at-home order and, as of this writing, 13 states have rescinded their stay-at-home order. With the exception of extremely rural Montana, all are continuing to see a steady rise in cases and deaths.

See also:

• Timeline of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States (Wikipedia)
• COVID-19 pandemic in the United States (Wikipedia)
• U.S. state and local government response to the COVID-19 pandemic (Wikipedia)

Answer 2

Arguably, Russia did.

Traditional Russian response to any problem in the last 20 years is to do everything on federal level to be able to praise V. V. Putin. All decision making process is centralized.

However, nCoV pandemic with its restrictions of public freedoms and economic activity seems to be too toxic for that, so it's one of very rare cases where decisions, and especially blame, are mostly shifted to regions.

This time, you hear more of Sobyanin's (mayor of Moscow where the virus got most foothold) decisions and actions than those of Putin. Then, each region got to decide which measures they take against the infection, and on what time frame. And they have decided differently, which is something nearly unheard of, in modern Russia.

Then again, nobody has declared the need of more decentralization, but de facto this need manifested itself in the circumstances and had to be fulfulled.

Answer 3

Yes. Scotland.

And Wales. And Northern Ireland.

The UK Government, in London, has decided that the virus reproduction number, R, averaged over the entire UK, has dropped enough to allow relaxation of lockdown.

However, the value of R may vary across different parts of the UK. It could be dangerously high in some places, while the average value is pulled low by the improving situation in London.

The other constituent governments (Scotland, Wales and NI), think R is still too high in their nations and so will continue lockdown. They are experiencing backlash and confusion from this. These problems would be reduced if those countries were further devolved, or ideally, made independent of, Westminster.

Answer 4

I would say Sweden has done this depending on how you define decentralization. The public health agency in Sweden is relatively autonomous, meaning they make decisions and recommendations and the government accepts those and implements those relatively unquestioning. The position by the national public health agency has been to not shut the country down and leave it open for business. On the other hand they do recognize that there is a serious pandemic going on and recommend people to practice social distancing. There is a high degree of trust in Sweden, so people and businesses have been taking it upon themselves to implement the recommendations on social distancing. Whether it is going well or not is up for debate and probably something that will only be able to be said for certain in the future once good data has been collected and analyzed. They do however claim that the rate of infection has been flattening out which is of course a good sign.