Inspiration of Taiwan’s Battle against COVID-19 Pandemic in 2020: A Policy Tools Perspective
Ssu-Ming Chang
Abstract
As the COVID-19 pandemic kept raging, Taiwan's epidemic prevention performance has been praised by many countries around the world. From the policy tools perspective, the study explores government's epidemic prevention measures from January to the end of August in 2020, and answers the following three questions: (1) the types of tools selected and used by the governments, (2) factors affecting the design and selection of policy tools, and (3) the impact of digital technology on the use of government tools.
The findings are as follows: First, the governments have adopted a combination of multiple tools, with a combination of hard and soft strategies, and the types of tools used are mixed and very diverse, but corresponding policy tools are matched. Also, the priority of government tactics is epidemic prevention first and bailout later. Second, the selection and application of epidemic-fighting tools are based on previous experience and some existing infrastructures in Taiwan. Therefore, most of the tools are locally connected, contextually related to Taiwan’s environment, reflecting the governance model as well as people’s cultural heritage. Third, digital technology has been widely used by Taiwan’s government in its measures of epidemic prevention, with an effect of sharpening these policy tools. Considering that the challenge of the COVID-19 is still very serious, it is suggested that the government should actively develop new policy tools based on the nudge principle.
Keywords: COVID-19, epidemic prevention, policy tools, nudge