LAUSR

Like many Western European countries, Belgium and the Netherlands have been strongly hit by COVID-19. Almost simultaneously, the virus spread, caused a relatively high number of infections and severe lockdown measures were imposed; however, at the same time, the crisis management response has been sufficiently different to justify a systematic comparative analysis. We start with the premise that decisions made on the basis of incomplete information show the true nature of governments’ response to a crisis, which is conditioned by legacies arising from the past and organizational cultures, existing and new governance structures, and strategies used by specific actors. We show that the difference in crisis management echoes the countries’ different types of consociationalism, though also that Belgian federalism and Dutch decentralism impeded a truly coherent response. The cost of coordinating different government levels made a uniform approach difficult too. Actor strategies attempting to exploit the crisis seem to have influenced the response the least but did have an impact on perceptions of the response. Points for practitioners The article unravels how the governments in the Low Countries responded to the COVID-19 challenge in the first half of 2020. It allows practitioners to better understand that under circumstances of an imminent crisis, specific governance structures matter. It also reveals that the cost of coordination between the federated and the federal level turned out to be quite high in Belgium. In the Netherlands, a lot of autonomy was left to federated and local authorities. This too impeded a more coherent approach. COVID-19 certainly offers possibilities for policymakers to exploit the crisis but opportunities are not always taken.