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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Public Health Policy
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1562915
This article is part of the Research Topic Maximizing Local Government Impact on Community Health Initiatives View all 8 articles
The dynamic capabilities of county-level government in China during the outbreak of large-scale epidemics: a study based on three cases
Provisionally accepted- 1 China University of Mining and Technology, Xuzhou, China
- 2 Huaibei Normal University, Huaibei, Anhui, China
Background: After China entered the stage of normalized epidemic prevention and control, county-level government became the leading force and responsible body for prevention and control. In some counties, the epidemic was initially sporadic but later evolved into large-scale transmission. This situation posed a severe challenge to their dynamic capabilities. The dynamic capacity of county-level government largely determines the effectiveness of dealing with large-scale epidemics.Methods: This study selected three counties with a large-scale outbreak of COVID-19 in 2022 as samples for multi-case analysis, and used insight ability, integration ability, learning ability and innovation ability as dimensions for comparative analysis. Data and information were collected from the official websites of these three county-level governments using the octopus collector.The dynamic capabilities of county-level government are related to the results of large-scale epidemic prevention and control. This topic has been less explored in existing research. Compared to Si County and Linshui County, Jiutai District clearly lacks dynamic capabilities in large-scale epidemic prevention and control. The different abilities of county-level government play different roles in epidemic prevention and control.County-level government are at the weakest stress point in the hierarchical structure of China's power system. They are at the forefront of public crisis management playing an important role, which further increase their pressure. Enhancing the dynamic capabilities of county-level government can greatly help them effectively respond to crises and alleviate their vulnerability.
Keywords: COVID-19, county-level government, dynamic capabilities, large-scale epidemics, Crisis
Received: 18 Jan 2025; Accepted: 17 Mar 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Wei, Wang, Wu, Xu and Zhang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Huangyue Wu, China University of Mining and Technology, Xuzhou, China
Zuying Xu, Huaibei Normal University, Huaibei, 235000, Anhui, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.