Multilevel coordination and legitimacy of social, economic and fiscal crisis management

The social, economic and fiscal impact of COVID-19 transcended the boundaries of subnational and national jurisdictions. Yet, depending the distribution of political, legislative and fiscal authority, states took different approaches to decide and implement their policy responses across multiple levels. The paper therefore discusses the political legitimacy of governments’ crisis management during the pandemic. It focuses in particular on how unilateral and coordinated actions affected the input, output and throughput legitimacy of the social, economic and fiscal measures of governments.