The year 2020 will forever be associated with crises. First came the COVID-19 pandemic, a joint public health and economic emergency that spread around the world with unprecedented speed and scope.  Next came a crisis of international cooperation, as countries struggled to coordinate their efforts in tackling a common viral foe. Then came a compounding social crisis—anchored in the United States but reverberating around the world—focused on issues of systemic racism and police brutality.

All of this has prompted fresh calls for a broad-minded approach to the integrated challenges of policymaking. For their part, many policymakers have long been accustomed to incremental processes and solutions that push gradually against the boundaries of popular and political will. Today, many of these same people find themselves scrambling to manage rapid and radical shifts toward uncharted territory, in terms of both what’s possible and what’s expected.

To chart a path through the complex uncertainty, we suggest three distinct forms of action—Response, Recovery, and Reset.

  • Response in the near term: where the main objective is to protect lives and livelihoods, especially among people who are most vulnerable.
  • Recovery over the medium term: where the main objective is to restart and rebuild economic and social activity in a manner that protects public health, promotes societal healing, and preserves the environment. Here there might naturally be more debates around desired outcomes and greater complexity to finding solutions.
  • Reset systems for the long term: where the objective is to establish, wherever possible, a new equilibrium among political, economic, social, and environmental systems toward common goals. Ultimately, the only limit within this category is our collective imagination. As we emerge from a moment of great crisis, we can imagine a “great reset.”

Read the full article about an effective COVID-19 rebuild by Zia Khan and John McArthur at Brookings.