Assuring Social Distancing Through Regulatory Intermediaries: The Role of Local Facilities in Deterring COVID‐19 in South Korea

Abstract

Amid the COVID‐19 Pandemic, many countries worldwide have resorted to social distancing to maintain a certain physical distance to avoid direct contact between people. Despite the abundant literature on social distancing, how this mode of direct state intervention, which inevitably requires a lot of regulatory resources, was implemented has been a rare source of scientific inquiry. This paper attempts to fill this gap by presenting a case study that explores how regulatory resource deficits faced by regulators implementing social distancing were addressed in the regulator‐intermediary‐target (RIT) network. This paper highlights the role of local facilities as regulatory intermediaries in implementing social distancing in South Korea. Although social distancing was purported to keep physical distance among individuals, authorities' enforcement activities were primarily, though not entirely, targeted at local facilities. Analyzing in‐depth interviews with 30 local frontline inspectors conducted in September 2021, this paper finds that local facilities played a key intermediary role in deterring the spread of COVID‐19 as a private regulator. We argue that this role, constructed in the RIT network, was one reason South Korea could successfully deter the spread of the virus without a lockdown in the early stage of the Pandemic.