Is it all about the government's early response? A configurational analysis of 27 cases in governing COVID‐19 in China

Abstract Governance and policy authors are concerned with the effectiveness of crisis management. In this study, the effectiveness of 27 Chinese provinces in addressing COVID‐19 is examined using the QCA approach. The contribution identifies four pathways for explaining effective crisis management and two for explaining ineffective crisis management. Strong analytical capacity is a relatively critical condition for achieving effective crisis management. This study contributes to the existing governance and policy literature through uncovering the mechanisms underlying effective crisis management.