Publications

The COVID-19 pandemic has given science, scientific information, and health experts a prominent role in public policy design. However, political decisions are rarely automatically derived from scientific information or expertise. Political decisions are made of complex set of choices, balancing preferences and objectives that are sometimes difficult to reconcile. Moreover, all scientific information entails a degree of uncertainty, especially when dealing with a new problem like COVID-19. In turn, this uncertainty can be a source of discomfort when information is needed to inform a public policy decision. Finally, the interpretation of scientific information can be influenced by elements of contexts, institutional structures, and decision makers' own risk assessment and tolerance. Thus, similar information can be perceived and used differently by policy designers. In this chapter, we focus on the role of information selection and processing in policy design by studying school closure decisions during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Faced with similar infection curves, Sweden and Quebec have made radically different decisions about school closures. While on March 1st 2020 Sweden decided to keep its schools open, on March 13th, Quebec decided to close them down. By drawing from public statements in the two jurisdictions between January and June 2021, we argue that the Swedish authorities have favoured information from the World Health Organization, whereas Quebec has relied more on foreign experiences. The interpretation of this different information and the attitudes towards risk and uncertainty have led the Swedish and Quebec governments to make radically different choices.

Lemor, A., Beaulieu-Guay, L.-R., Öberg, P. et Montpetit, É. (2022). Listening to science in policy design: The contrasting cases of quebec and sweden during the early days of the covid-19 pandemic. Dans Research handbook of policy design.