Pandemic response in rural Peru: Multi-scale institutional analysis of the COVID-19 crisis

The first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic was devastating in Peru, which suffered a high death rate and severe economic disruption. These results occurred despite ambitious response measures, revealing widespread institutional weaknesses across the country's levels of government. We analyze responses across the four levels of government, with emphasis on local governance in rural areas, to understand how institutions and contexts shape crisis management outcomes. We focus on the Arequipa region, drawing from 44 interviews with officials and community members. We found that the crisis provoked a reversion to the norm across multiple scales, though with significant differentiation. The national government fell back on a centralized, militarized approach that effectively reclaimed power but was ineffective in confronting the pandemic. Counter the overarching recentralization trend, in rural peripheries where state power was always partial, norms of informal local governance were reinforced and intensified. The de facto autonomy in rural areas elicited a mix of paralysis and improvisation, with outcomes that varied widely from place to place and over time. These bifurcated results in the face of crisis reveal important weaknesses in Peru's governance structures and institutions and show how preexisting habits and norms were reproduced in the face of crisis, rather than reformed or transcended.

Automated summary

The first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Peru was devastating, with high death rates and severe economic disruption despite ambitious response measures. The national government's centralized, militarized approach was ineffective in confronting the pandemic, while informal local governance norms were reinforced in rural areas. The bifurcated results in crisis management revealed weaknesses in Peru's governance structures and institutions, and how preexisting habits were reproduced rather than reformed in the face of crisis.