German centralization strategy during COVID-19: Continuing or interrupting a trend?

Publication date: Dec 01, 2024

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, many countries applied centralization strategies to the distribution of power between national government and regional/local governments over responsibility for regulatory tasks. As a result, health-policy decision-making competences were shifted from the regional level to the national level (vertical shift of decision-making competences). This centralization trend for the purpose of infection control is evident in Germany. We conducted a quantitative and qualitative analysis of health-policy regulatory measures (March 2018 to March 2020) in order to investigate whether the vertical shift in decision-making competences was already a trend in Germany before the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond infection control. Our results show that the centralization strategy observed during COVID-19 does not continue a trend. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, what was most important was the distribution of power at national level between government and non-government institutions (horizontal allocation of decision-making competences). This long-term trend strengthens the decision-making competences of government institutions and weakens non-government institutions.

Concepts Keywords
Covid COVID-19
Germany Decentralization
Health Decision Making
Pandemic Decision-making
Federalism
Germany
Germany
Government
Health Care Reform
Health Policy
Health policy
Humans
Local Government
Pandemics
Regulation
SARS-CoV-2

Semantics

Type Source Name
disease MESH COVID-19
disease MESH infection

Original Article

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