Social and economic crises attending the COVID-19 pandemic thus invite scholarly reflection about public attitudes, social leadership, and the role of social and institutional memory in the context of systemic disruption. This article examines Hong Kong as a case where failure to respond effectively could have been expected due to low levels of public trust and political legitimacy, but where, in fact, crisis response was unexpectedly successful. The case exposes underdevelopment in scholarly assumptions about the connections among political legitimacy, societal capacity, and crisis response capabilities.

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14494035.2020.1783791

Hartley, Kris and Jarvis, Darryl. (2020). “Policy Making in a Low Trust State: Legitimacy, State Capacity, and Responses to Covid-19 in Hong Kong.” Policy and Society