Is conditional and temporary collection of data necessary in a public health crisis for democracies? This article attempts at examining the institutional variance in digital tool deployment to contact trace COVID-19 across six different democratic systems: South Korea, Europe (Germany, France, Italy and the UK post-Brexit) and the U.S. It aims at projecting varied country strategies in embracing the digital economy of the future driven by artificial intelligence (AI) as the contactless economy becomes the norm. Europe and the U.S. have refrained from a centralized contact tracing method that involve GPS data collection and used a minimalist approach utilizing apps based on Google and Apple's Application Programming Interface (API) enabled by Bluetooth technology downloadable only voluntary by citizens, with western European countries striving to abide by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), in turn failing to flatten the curve earlier on during the COVID-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, South Korea's maximalist approach of digital tracing utilizing big data analysis on the centralized COVID-19 Smart Management System (SMS) platform and apps on self-diagnosis and self-quarantine under the Infectious Disease Control and Prevention Act (IDCPA) – revised in the aftermath of the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) in 2015 – led the country to flatten the curve at an early stage. In addressing the gaps among varied approaches, this article analyzes the legal foundations and policy rationale for conditional and temporary data collection and processing across jurisdictions.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2020.105198.].

•Political elites learn from the past to enhance sustainability of their leadership.•Public and private sectors collaborated to efficiently combat COVID-19 in South Korea.•Pandemic governance boosted public support for the incumbent government in elections.•Democratic governments are pressured to perform well in crisis management.•Large-scale RT-PCR testing is required for effective early response to COVID-19. How can political elites learn from the past to enhance sustainability of their leadership in a pandemic situation? In this article, we develop a theoretical framework of policy implementation that combines collaboration from public and private sectors (“Public-Private Partnership,” or PPP) to efficiently deal with urgent crises such as COVID-19. We explain the role of new institutions prompted by policy failure precedence (Time 1) that at a later time period (Time 2) allow for the activation of PPPs with the aim to extend the political life of incumbent leaderships. Specifically, we examine the case of South Korea, a country in which a prior case of MERS in 2015 (Time 1) had established new policies for pandemic governance. In 2020, such policies were activated by the incumbent leadership in order to contain COVID-19 (Time 2). In particular, for swift and effective management of the pandemic, the South Korean government utilized partnerships with the private sector to exponentially increase the amount of Real-Time Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) testing. We apply Policy Feedback Theory to demonstrate the political effects of failed policy precedents and how the political outcomes again shape new policies in a dynamic and cyclical manner. Empirically, we conduct a content analysis of South Korea’s pharmaceutical sector in government procurement and exports of test-kits during the COVID-19 pandemic. We show that as the pandemic situation progressed, South Korea’s leader, who had been in danger of plummeting support to the extent that impeachment was discussed as a viable option, drastically shifted public opinion to achieve a landslide victory in general elections in April 2020. Our findings suggest that democratic governments, aware of precedents and wary of their fate in elections, are pressured to perform well in crisis management, and thus turn to rapidly mobilizing public and private means for survival. Such means are evidenced by the case of emergency use authorization (EUA) process for test-kits, in which “leapfrogging players” – up-and-coming innovators – that contribute to turning a pandemic crisis into an opportunity for sustainable leadership and for themselves.

Since the end of World War II, the United States has played a leading role in shaping the global economic system. While US influence has waned with the reconstruction of Europe and the rise of China, it has remained the leading power in the international system. The election of Donald Trump, however, represents a significant shift in US trade policy. In its first days the Trump administration withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership and has since taken specific steps to renegotiate trade agreements and protect US industries. Politicizing the importance to reduce bilateral US trade deficits and to bring manufacturing jobs back home, the Trump administration has also utilized trade remedies in addition to the seldom-used safeguards to advance its "America First" economic agenda. Although trade remedy actions–the imposition of antidumping and countervailing duty based on the US Trade Act of 1974–have been critical instruments for US trade, prioritizing trade deficit reduction in US trade policy has the potential to erode the underlying international system and exacerbate rather than resolve the tensions that have spurred nationalistic economic movements. Against this backdrop, in this article we explore the implications of an abrogation of US global economic leadership for the international trading system and US influence more broadly. We also consider the implications for East Asia and the global economy as a whole as China, the European Union, and Japan take on larger leadership roles within the global trading system.