Vertical and horizontal intergovernmental relations during the first wave of the COVID-19 crisis: experience from the extremely fragmented CEE countries

The Czech Republic and Slovakia rank among the extremely fragmented European countries in terms of their local government structure. In addition to local governments, regional governments were established in both countries in connection with EU accession, which means that policy making is framed at three levels in both countries. If it applies that more centralised structures are, generally, easier to coordinate in crisis situations, then these two decentralised post-communist countries offer a great laboratory for examining how this unexpected pandemic crisis that has affected all socio-political and economic levels and structures has been handled in a very fragmented environment. We intend to examine the behaviour of individual levels of government, measures adopted by the governments and their expected and unexpected impacts during the first wave of a pandemic crisis with a special focus on possible changes in the systems of multi-level governance.