"Whereas... therefore": examining the use of gubernatorial executive orders to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic
Date
2023
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic, now entering its fourth year, has been an evolving challenge, requiring public and private sector entities to adapt to the changing conditions and needs of their populations. While three years of public health crisis have taught the world much, actions taken during the pandemic’s earliest days are important to understand. As COVID-19 took hold in the United States, states saw a quickly spreading virus and rising death toll. Governors, through their use of executive orders, were able to respond quickly to the situation and implement a response to protect citizens. The emerging literature on gubernatorial responses to COVID-19 has been primarily concerned with specific policy activities. In contrast, the goal of this research is to compare how governors used their unique policy tool, the executive order, to respond to conditions on the ground in the early days of COVID-19. ☐ Content analysis on a random sample of executive orders issued by nine United States governors during the first six months of the pandemic (March 1—August 31, 2020) was performed on approximately 700 unique policy provisions identified within the sample. Frequency analysis was conducted to determine what, if any, differences existed in the ways governors used executive orders to respond to the pandemic. Chi-square tests and Cramer’s V measures examined what association may exist between the use of executive orders during the COVID-19 pandemic and the political environment in each of the states and to the COVID-19 conditions within each state. ☐ Findings indicate that governors used executive orders in comparable ways and implemented similar types of policy responses to respond to the health emergency. Partisanship, while having some impact on how governors used their executive order authority, does not account for the full breadth of gubernatorial policy making during the early pandemic.
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Keywords
COVID-19, Executive orders, Governors, Unique policy tool