State or Civil Society – What Matters in Fighting COVID-19? A Comparative Analysis of Hong Kong and Singapore

This article investigates the nuanced and disaggregated role of state and civil society in the fight against COVID-19 in Hong Kong and Singapore through a comparative policy study . Hong Kong and Singapore provide two contrasting cases of state-society interaction under the framework of Political Nexus Triads (PNT). Hong Kong is combating COVID-19 with more dependence on its civil society and bureaucrats while Singapore relies more on a politician-led state approach. They represent the diversity of state-society relations and multiple configurational causality in COVID-19 responses and question the efficacy of any single and contextless model