After the “honeymoon”, what is next? COVID-19 policies in Europe beyond the first wave

Abstract

This special issue is the sequelto the issue on COVID-19 policies published in European Policy Analysis in fall 2020, which focused on the European countries' early responses to the pandemic. The collection aims to go beyond the “honeymoon” phase of the outbreak, that is, the first wave. The selected cases—Sweden, Greece and Cyprus, Germany, Turkey, Hungary, and the Eurozone—provide a variety of national features in terms of political systems, institutional structures, and policy styles. The featured articles adopt different theoretical perspectives and are authored by scholars from a variety of disciplines, who pursue both interpretative and explanatory goals by focusing on policy adoption, policy perception, and learning opportunities, but also on local pandemic management and policy outcomes. A fil rouge unites the featured contributions: they all show the importance of analyzing change over sufficiently long timeframes, to capture the complexity of existing trends.