D1.1 Working Paper: Coding Criteria

This working paper introduces a draft coding scheme to trace subnational authority in the governmental responses during the Covid-19 crisis. Existing measurements for decentralization such as the Regional Authority Index and the Local Autonomy Index do not trace any (de)centralization during the Covid-19 crisis because constitutions and laws on local and regional government were not changed and these indicators are not sufficiently fine-grained to tap changes in the allocation of policy provision competences between tiers of government. Yet, the involvement of subnational tiers in the governmental responses to the Covid-19 crisis varies widely between countries and over time. Furthermore, the Covid-19 crisis provides for a rare opportunity to test several hypotheses for the causes for and impacts of decentralized crisis responses. Hence, there is a strong need for an indicator that can trace subnational authority during crises.

In this working paper, we discuss the research rationale underlying the draft coding scheme, we detail conceptual choices and the development of indicators, we provide argumentation for the operationalization of the indicators, we address practical issues in relation to the application of the draft coding scheme, and we discuss the generalizability of the draft coding scheme to other crises.