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This chapter analyzes governmental responses to the COVID-19 pandemic in a highly decentralized federal country. Canada has a decentralized approach in many policy areas, including health care, in which provinces are the primary decision-makers and service providers. This decentralized health-care system allowed provinces to respond according to regional and local contexts and needs. The capacity building and the policy learning related to previous crises and horizontal coordination were key to policy responses to the pandemic. Moreover, unlike other countries, Canada did not centralize decisions throughout the pandemic, and did not reinforce competition and uncoordinated actions. The federal government also has had a central role coordinating COVID-19 policy responses. Nevertheless, Canada faced some challenges stemming from the lack of uniformity across the country, especially related to regional and local restrictions, enforcement mechanisms, testing, and travel restrictions.

Shedding light on urban transportation and, more specifically, the contemporary development of “smart” bikesharing systems (i.e. short-term bicycle rental services), the purpose of this paper is to focus on Montreal's bikesharing experiment. Known as BIXI (a contraction of the words BIcycle and taXI) since its inception in 2009, this system has been exported to other cities around the world, making it especially relevant for the analysis of this innovative and sustainable form of urban mobility.

By tracing the policy history of BIXI and the current political debate about its future while using a framework focusing on the role of ideas in public policy, the paper directly contributes to the literature on the growing role of bicycles in sustainable urban transportation. The qualitative analysis is based on a systematic review of government documents and BIXI-related articles published in the Montreal French- and English-language press. To complement this analysis and provide information about behind-the-lesson drawing processes leading to the creation of BIXI, six semi-structured interviews were conducted with officials in charge of bikesharing policy in Montreal, as well as in Boston and London, England, two cities that have adopted (and adapted) the BIXI model.

This analysis stresses the role of lesson drawing and framing processes in the development of Montreal's bikesharing system. While it is clear that the technological and policy developments of BIXI illustrate systematic and positive lesson drawing, on the framing and public relations side, the Montreal experiment suggests it is politically risky to boost public expectations about the potential costs of bikesharing systems for taxpayers. In addition to their innovative and sustainable contributions to urban transportation and pro-bike strategies, bikesharing systems are public investments that are not necessary free of costs for taxpayers. Framing these systems as public investments rather than a “free ride” for taxpayers would be a more accurate, and potentially effective, way to promote their development in the context of the current push for sustainable transportation policy in cities around the world.

What this paper offers is a sociological perspective on an emerging and important policy issue, through an original combination of lesson drawing and framing perspectives on policy development. Montreal's BIXI is one of the most discussed (and exported) bikesharing systems around the world, and this is the first detailed policy analysis devoted to its genesis and politics.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the growing literature on the policy impact of ideas and related cultural and discursive processes by exploring the historical embeddedness of the idea of solidarity in French social policy debates.

This paper adopts a qualitative, historical approach that traces the development of – and the relationship between – policy ideas and social programs over time.

First, exploring the work of reformer and politician Léon Bourgeois, the paper investigates the emergence of this concept in nineteenth and early twentieth century France. Second, analyzing the work of centrist scholar and intellectual Pierre Rosanvallon, the paper studies the French debate on solidarity and welfare state reform in the late 1980s and 1990s.

At the broadest level, this paper shows that contemporary social policy debates are grounded in long‐term historical as well as cultural processes and repertoires. Policy ideas that acquire the status of culturally resonant “keywords” can have a long history, and tracing their development is necessary to illuminate the role of ideas in contemporary social policy change.

As elsewhere, inequality has increasingly been on the agenda in recent years in Denmark, which has led to discussion about the redistributive role of welfare states across existing welfare regimes. Perhaps surprisingly, the Danish debate on inequality has revolved more specifically around how the country's tax system influences labour supply, especially the high level of marginal income taxation. The debate on poverty and inequality has become more prominent in Denmark in recent years, with a focus on the living standards of pensioners and children as well as the dynamic relationship between inequality and social policy. Thus, if there is a willingness to reduce inequality, a central challenge is to determine which instruments are available to counter rising inequalities in Denmark. In this context, the interaction between the issue of poverty and political support for specific social policies in Denmark is a challenge. Overall, the analysis suggests that tax reforms focusing on labour market supply have helped increase inequalities, thus indicating a possible trade-off between different aspects of welfare state development. Furthermore, the universality of the Danish model might be questioned in the coming years, which might also imply a debate on the generosity of a number of social security benefits, including those targeting the unemployed.

In this concluding chapter, the editors provide an overall assessment of contemporary Danish public governance based on the main findings in the preceding chapters of the edited volume. Surveying the Danish governance responses to contemporary mega-challenges, the chapter reflects on policy implications and contemplate the future of both research and practice related to public administration, politics and governance in Denmark. The chapter argues that recent public governance reforms have turned the Danish welfare state into a mix of a neo-Weberian state and an enabling state, which deploys its considerable resources to create economic growth for the benefit of the large majority of Danes, to satisfy the needs of citizens and businesses and to develop collaborative solutions to complex problems. While the chapter concludes that this modified version of the well-known universal welfare state is largely apt for meeting the mega-challenges of the twenty-first century, recent reforms seeking to enhance job-seeking incentives for the unemployed and to integrate immigrants have resulted in new forms of marginalisation of weaker societal groups. Moreover, evolving problems such as climate change, an ageing population and digital citizen privacy will require further public governance reforms in the years to come.

In the twenty-first century, societies around the world are facing a wide range of daunting global mega-challenges: poverty, unemployment, income inequality, unequal distribution of political power, ageing populations, uncontrolled migration, segregated urbanisation, increasing greenhouse gas emissions and a massive decrease in biodiversity. In recent years, politicians, journalists and academic observers have singled out the Nordic countries, Denmark in particular, as model societies of trusting and happy people that have handled many of these challenges with remarkable effectiveness. And yet others warn against ‘becoming Denmark,’ painting a picture of a dysfunctional, socialist nightmare with high taxes, low job motivation and a general lack of private initiative. In this introductory chapter, the editors cut through the noise of the international debate and set the scene for the nuanced analyses presented here of contemporary public governance in Demark and its capacity to tackle some of the most pressing problems of our time. Specifically, the chapter discusses various conceptualisations of the Danish welfare state, delineates some of its most important historical and structural traits and outlines the main empirical features of contemporary Danish public governance. Finally, it outlines the structure of the book and briefly introduces each of its subsequent chapters.

Many countries across the planet are facing unprecedented challenges because of COVID-19 infections and Nigeria inclusive. Although the 1999 constitution of Nigeria clearly states that security and welfare of the citizens are the primary purposes of government, the COVID-19 situation in Nigeria has exposed the government's attitude towards insecurity ravaging the country. Against this backdrop, this study focused on insecurity during COVID-19 pandemic in Nigeria to ascertain the policy gaps and prospects for inclusive security outfits. The study was anchored on institutional theory. Data for the study were drawn from participant observation and authentic secondary sources. The study identified that Nigeria has been held hostage by criminality of bandits, kidnappers, protests, etc. The study recommended among others that government should take advantage of the recent security loopholes in the country to establish a state police. This will lead to significant improvement in police service delivery.

The population of older people in the UK is expected to rise rapidly over the next 20 years and therefore identification of effective interventions that prevent functional decline and disablement is a public health priority. This review summarises the evidence for interventions in community settings that aim to prevent or delay disablement in later life.

A search of review‐level literature was conducted for the period September 1999 and 2009 of Ovid MEDLINE, EMBASE and CINAHL databases. It included interventions that aimed to prevent disablement of community dwelling older people (50+ years old). It excluded interventions carried out in institutional care and those focused on specific disease. The reviews were screened using the AMSTAR assessment tool.

The search identified 62 reviews of complex interventions (preventative home visits (n=9), integrated service delivery/case management and comprehensive geriatric assessment (n=6), falls prevention (n=17), exercise (n=15), nutritional needs (n=3), medication review (n=2), telecare/telehealth (n=5), social integration interventions (n=3) and vision screening (n=2).

The review identified many areas of unknown effectiveness, partly due to unstandardised use of outcomes and poor experimental design. The most promising complex interventions include: assessment of risk factors; and direct referral to an easily accessible, comprehensive range of interventions that are tailored to need and include long‐term follow up. There is consistent evidence that exercise can be beneficial, particularly in preventing falls, but overall, the evidence‐base for other specific interventions is limited.

Taking a gender-sensitive approach, this study examines the socio-economic and institutional drivers of household vulnerability to the shocks occasioned by the COVID-19 pandemic. The study employs country-level panel data for Nigeria. Data collected were analysed using descriptive statistics, Pearson's chi-square, and ordered logistic regression. The study found significant heterogeneity in vulnerability to the COVID-19 shocks between the male-headed households (MHHs) and female-headed households (FHHs) (p < 0.1). The econometric results reveal that in the MHHs, the geographical location, livelihood diversification, and ownership of television were the significant drivers of vulnerability to COVID-19–related shocks. In the FHHs, credit constraints, household size, value of the household assets, geographical location, ownership of television and radio, and experiences of previous shocks were found to be significant drivers of vulnerability to COVID-19–related shocks. This study provides insights for designing inclusive social protection interventions and gender-sensitive COVID-19 recovery policies.