Introduction

The upsurge of COVID-19 pandemic suddenly struck countries all over the world. The national responses to mitigate the disease and confront the multidimensional effects of the pandemic have been varied. However, regardless of the type or efficacy of these answers, this is a global problem since the virus spread without respecting territorial boundaries. Every country must consider the encompassing features of this problem when designing its intervention in public policies. In federal countries, their institutional and political characteristics make providing the public goods – in health, economic policy, education, and other policies – a much more complex issue (Bednar, 2009; Dardanelli, Kincaid, Fenna, Kaiser, Lecours, & Singh, 2018). This book addresses how five “democratic federal political systems” (Behnke & Mueller, 2017, p. 512) – Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, and United States – have been responding to a complex intergovernmental problem (CIP) (Paquet & Schertzer, 2020) such as the COVID-19 pandemic.