The management of the COVID-19 emergency in Argentina (2020-2021)

Abstract

This article presents hypotheses on how the National Government of Argentina dealt with the sanitary emergency produced by COVID-19, between the beginning of 2020 and the end of 2021, framing it is a public management case study. It shows how the case can be creatively tackled using an approach inspired on Michael Barzelay’s recent methodological suggestions (2019 and 2023). The reconstruction of the campaign shows Argentina followed an archetypal emergency response, with a sequence perplexity/skepticism, testing/learning, design/plan and adjustment/adaptation. The management of the emergency evolved in three stages, coinciding with the most significant waves of contagion, comparatively in the same way it did in most of the Western Hemisphere: damage control for the first wave (2020), accelerated vaccination in the second (2021) and gradual deactivation along 2022. The results of the exercise suggest the emergency was better managed -at least in the first phase- than what should have been expected from the context and circumstances. It also suggests the methodology can be useful to present hypotheses on why and how, as well as useful ideas for the comparative study of public interventions and organizations as “artifacts”.