Crisis management in federal states: the role of peak intergovernmental councils in Germany and Switzerland during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Schnabel, Johanna; Freiburghaus, Rahel; Hegele, Yvonne (2022). Crisis management in federal states: the role of peak intergovernmental councils in Germany and Switzerland during the COVID-19 Pandemic. Der moderne Staat : dms, 15(1-2022), pp. 1-20. Budrich 10.3224/dms.v15i1.10

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In federal states, intergovernmental councils were the main institutions through which the federal government and the constituent units coordinated their responses to COVID-19. To examine whether peak councils assumed a leading role during the COVID-19 pandemic to ensure cross sectoral as well as intergovernmental coordination, this article compares the role of two “peak councils”—the Conference of Premiers (MPK) in Germany and the Conference of Cantonal Governments (KdK) in Switzerland—with sectoral councils in normal times and during the COVID-19 pandemic. The analysis relies on an original database of more than 900 council outputs based on which we compare the level of activity, the publicity, the direction of action, and the bindingness of outputs. The findings show that MPK took a leading role during the pandemic, a role that was indeed unusual when compared to normal times, while KdK, which likewise does not play a leading role in normal times, did not during the pandemic either.

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