Pandemic governance - a marathon

Ville-Pekka Niskanen
11.8.2021

In the recently finished Tokio Olympics, Sara Kuivisto surprised Finnish sports spectators by setting new Finnish records on both 800 meters and 1500 meters. Not only did she break her own records once, but twice in a row.

However, was it a surprise? Setting four new records is an impressive achievement few athletes manage to achieve in one race. However, what precedes these surprising performances are years of practice and months of both physical and mental preparation.

Jennifer Wells (2013) argues that big changes often manifest themselves as seemingly surprising surges, be it a natural phenomenon, social movement or why not even a spectacular performance in the Olympics. However, when accounting for the long processes that have preceded these events, they stop seeming surprising. Storms gather strength at sea before hitting land and surprising households with power outages, young climate activists have been inspired by Greta Thunberg’s school strike and an athlete works daily to better their performance. The seed for significant future change has been sown in the past.

In path dependency literature, previous decisions and choices are seen to restrict one’s choices further down the line. The corona pandemic, for example, has been brewing under the surface for a long time. Developments that started decades or even centuries ago are at the heart of the crisis. However, as Kuivisto’s Olympic success stands to show, path dependencies are not merely negative, as the future is built on previous actions and decisions. In order to run further tomorrow, practice has to take place today.

The past two years have shown, that governing the COVID-pandemic is not a 100-meter dash where a winner emerges in just a matter of seconds. What is rather needed is a marathon like pandemic governance strategy. Such a strategy builds on positive path dependencies, which are created through training of preparedness, resilience, adaptation and learning. Just as athletes train and shape their training based on previous experiences, successes in marathon like pandemic governance are also built on training, learning and gathering resources for future needs, thereby hopefully building a non-surprising future. As Kuivisto stated in an Yle interview “—this was no surprise. I intended to perform well.”

MSc. Ville-Pekka Niskanen is a project researcher in the IRWIN project and a doctoral student at the University of Vaasa.