THE IMPORTANCE OF NEO-WEBERIANISM IN THE CONTEXT OF COVID-19 GLOBAL PANDEMIC MANAGEMENT

Abstract

Neo-Weberianism is a modern direction of public administration reform, the expression of which, to varying degrees, is increasingly being observed in various states. This direction is particularly relevant in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. An analysis of the administration of the COVID-19 pandemic shows that coherence between vertically integrated management, a professional civil service, and the influence of civil society and communities on public decision-making is at the heart of neo-Weberianism, and becomes particularly important in the event of an emergency of this nature. Many countries choose similar or identical anti-crisis measures to combat the threat of a pandemic. However, differences in applying the principles of neo-Weberian governance can also be observed between countries. The authors of this article selected three Central European countries (EU member states) – Poland (large), Hungary (medium), and Lithuania (small) – for a more detailed analysis of pandemic management. In Poland, in order to manage the pandemic and its financial consequences in perspective, redundancies or pay cuts to some civil servants and other public sector employees in public sector organizations were modeled. Hungary had the strictest anti-pandemic quarantine of the three countries selected for analysis, and at first glance it seems that the country inspection we see that the Hungarian government used population surveys and tried to take into account citizens’ views on the deadlines for overcoming the pandemic. In Lithuania, by coordinating strict pandemic quarantine, the aim was to ensure the provision of high-quality information to the population.