Small island states, COVID-19, and public policies: a thematic analysis

This chapter conducts a thematic analysis of published scholarship on COVID-19 in the 19 small island states of the Caribbean and the Pacific. To undertake this task, an analytical framework is created via three literatures: policy design, island state, and COVID-specific administrative and policy literatures. The findings suggest that while policy design tools are employed by the sampled states, scholars infrequently referenced the design literature when discussing tools. Despite each of the 65 included articles discussing one or more small island states, social science scholars were more likely to consider small island state challenges than articles published within medical or agricultural science journals. Given that nearly all of the 19 small island states outperformed their near neighbors of Australia and the United States vis-à-vis their pandemic response, this chapter concludes with implications for cross-disciplinary research on small island states.