Communicative Governance to Mitigate the COVID-19 Pandemic

Emerging democracies are handicapped by systemic weaknesses such as inadequate healthcare safety nets, weak administrative capacities, and rigidly hierarchical bureaucracies and conflicts between levels of political leadership. The COVID-19 pandemic creates the urgent need for governments to overcome these structural limitations and facilitate responsive governance. This article uses the lens of communicative governance to describe how governments respond to the emerging health emergency and its challenges. It uses the case of the state of Delhi in India to analyze how the tools of government were operated to govern during an escalating health crisis. It documents the unique policy and administrative practices that are driving the response to the COVID-19 pandemic in the global South. In doing so, it points to the ways in which urban e-planning can foster transformative capacities to support local communities.