June Park (George Washington University/National Research Foundation of Korea), William Grimes (Boston University)

In this moderated evening talk, Dr. Park presents findings from her latest publication with Eunbin Chung (Univ of Utah) in the special issue on ‘Pandemics, COVID-19, Sustainability and Development’ in the journal World Development. They present a theoretical framework of policy implementation that combines collaboration between public and private sectors (“Public-Private Partnership,” or PPP) to efficiently deal with urgent crises such as COVID-19. The authors explain the role of new institutions prompted by policy failure precedence (Time 1: Middle East Respiratory Syndrome in 2015) that at a later time period (Time 2: COVID-19 in 2020) allow for the activation of PPPs with the aim to extend the political life of incumbent leaderships.