The COVID-19 pandemic has rekindled old controversies, including the centuries-old debate about which form of government is better: a federal state or a unitary one. The latest to raise the issue, albeit obliquely, is German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Flustered by the perception that Germany, a federal republic of 16 states, seems to be floundering in managing SARS-CoV-2, she told a television interviewer that she’ll "have to think about how that might be dealt with federally in a uniform way.” What she has in mind is new public-health legislation that would let the feds seize certain powers from the states.
In many ways, Germany is in the same conundrum as other federal states, from the U.S. and Canada to Belgium and Switzerland, Brazil, India and Australia: How, in a pandemic, do you balance regional autonomy and flexible local responses with national coordination and coherence?
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