Conclusion. Future tense: A new grammar for the policy sciences?

This chapter makes no predictions about the post-pandemic policy world, but assumes that there will be a need for new ways to think about, and practice, public policy, ways that demand more than just renovations in theory, but a new grammar for the field. It cites best guesses about the pandemic’s global economic impact in 2020-21, and then lists some of the key "policy trackers” that appeared in the spring and summer of 2020. The range of policy interventions (e.g., public health, economic, and social) that most governments used were fairly standard, but impact varied more due to pre-existing demographic conditions, timing and implementation. The chapters in this book suggest a "future tense” for the policy sciences: the pandemic seemed to expose a fatal fragility in economic, political, and global institutions that had long been taken for granted. A new syntax for the policy sciences will have to grapple with a new role for the state; changes in policy fields, issues and debates; and the stress tests experienced by our conventional theories.