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Following an intermittent and halting roll-out, Combined Authorities (CAs) are now an established part of English governance. They represent a ‘pooling' of competences by different geographically contiguous local authorities which approximately align with economic geographies and have emerged with strong encouragement from central government. Today, they cover most of England's large urban centres and enjoy a modest and variable range of permissions to act over planning, transport, and economic development. Since their establishment, they have grown in profile, owing in part to the presence of Directly Elected Mayors, who provide the model with executive leadership, visibility, and electoral legitimacy. The period of the Covid-19 pandemic provides an opportunity to assess their role and influence and to explore how this changed during and as a result of this period of sustained national emergency. Drawing upon publicly available data related primarily – but not exclusively – to three CAs (West Midlands, Teesside, and Liverpool), we conclude that they have played three main overlapping roles. Firstly, they have proven to be engaged in coordination and mediation between regional stakeholders. Secondly, they have proved influential as agenda setters, drawing attention to central government failure. Thirdly, they have acted within their regeneration and planning competences to strategise the economic and urban futures of their city-regions.

Covid-19 is the first emergency that affected Italy in its regional institutional set-up. Through a qualitative-quantitative analysis of the regional resolutions in 2020, the article proposes a first analysis of the regional system. Drawing from their own resources, the regions have deployed 7.3 billion euros, of which two billion is intended for interventions to support families and 5.3 to support the production system. The regions that have implemented the most significant interventions per capita are the Autonomous Provinces, the regions with special statute and the large southern regions, the latter largely drawing on the resources of the structural funds. We observe an evolution in the allocation of resources from general and emergency aspects to specific characteristics of the regional production sectors. The regional system has shown a certain ability to mobilize financial resources and a significant degree of differentiation.

To cope with increasing endogenous pressure (e.g., population aging and the emergence of new social risks) and scarce resources, Italian local welfare actors have had to reshuffle their economic, ideational, and human resources to deliver tailor-made responses to a wider range of beneficiaries through co-management. The Covid-19 pandemic further enabled the processes mentioned above. It contributed to a catalyzation of solutions from local hybrid organizations (a “welfare mix” or “collaborative governance”) to cope with the disruptive socio-economic consequences of the crisis and to foster social innovation processes. Considering these transformations, this article addresses the following research question: How have public actors strengthened their capacity to foster policy change through innovative and collaborative processes? This research aims to analyze the development of policy change at a local level with a view to carrying out an in-depth analysis of policy adaptation dynamics.

Since its onset in 2020 Covid-19 impacts have engendered rapid interventions across all policy domains and at all scales of government. This has prompted lively debate around the wider significance and longer-term implications of such moves with regard to their role as potential 'punctuations' within a broader policy paradigm shift. This includes acting as a ‘path-clearing' mechanism that heralds a move towards a different approach; representing the onset of ‘path deviation' towards such a change; quickly adding to the implementation of new ideas in a process of 'policy acceleration'; or essentially replicating existing patterns to provide 'trend reinforcement'. This paper applies these concepts to a wide range of evidence on local government responses to Covid-19 across the United Kingdom (UK). The analysis focuses on five selected domains: supporting and coordinating mutual aid; maintaining local economies; addressing homelessness; managing parks and other public spaces; and promoting active travel through road space reallocation. Developments in each of these areas are framed by both wider operational and existing policy contexts, as well as with respect to geographical and sectoral variations. The conclusion is that evidence exists for all four types of 'punctuation', but the patterns are inconsistent both between and within different local authorities and policy domains.

The pandemic has brought about various changes, such as work-from-home or telecommuting, and an increase in online shopping for day-to-day necessities. These changes have had a sizeable impact on commercial real estate businesses and, to a varying degree, on the fiscal base of local governments, especially in large cities. As the world settles into the post-pandemic era, flexible working arrangements such as remote work, hybrid work, and telecommuting are expected to become the new normal. As a result, large and small corporates have been reviewing policies on remote working. Some of them have either dialled back their office expansion plans or have shown preference for premium office spaces. This move is expected to weigh on tax revenue collections from property rentals for cities. Also, revenue from transportation services and restaurant businesses would decline. Hence, local governments would have to redesign their fiscal policies and invest in new opportunities, such as creating recreational facilities and converting old office structures into residential buildings. This paper uses available literature, media references, and industry and government reports to identify the potential impact of changing work arrangements on the office market in Hong Kong, New York, and London. We further attempt to understand the impact of this transition on the fiscal base of cities and the actions that policymakers can take to mitigate and adapt to this new economic situation.