Campaign-style crisis regime: how China responded to the shock of COVID-19

Abstract

ABSTRACT How did China construct effective crisis governance systems to cope with a transboundary crisis like COVID-19? By integrating policy regime and campaign theories, this article constructs an analytical framework – the campaign-style crisis governance regime – to answer this question. The COVID-19 crisis was reconceived as a people’s war in order to prompt idea-sharing within the regime. The decision-making and coordination capacity of crisis management was enhanced by the establishment of top-down leading groups/headquarters and complex horizontal/vertical and formal/informal institutional arrangements. By aligning the interests of stakeholders through a variety of mechanisms, the supply of materials and human resources and the level of cooperation were significantly improved. China’s campaign-style crisis regime is embedded in the nation’s political-administrative structures. This article also discusses the theoretical and empirical implications of Chinese-style response in the end.