Community Resilience and COVID-19: A Fuzzy-Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis of Resilience Attributes in 16 Countries

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused massive disruptions to governments and societies across the world. While public healthcare systems have come under immense pressure, public trust in governments and institutions are also in decline. In this paper, we seek to assess the resilience of policy systems and processes in 16 countries during the COVID-19 pandemic through the use of fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA). We focus specifically on robustness, preparedness, social capital, and institutional strength as key attributes of community resilience at city-level. Our analysis of the data reveals that COVID-19 resilience is dependent on a combination of factors, with a multi-factorial approach to policy design and governance necessary for effective pandemic and disaster recovery.