COVID-19 has laid bare the capacity challenges faced by governments and exacerbated entrenched disadvantage and inequality, shining light on how decades of reform have eroded government capacity and bought to the fore deep divisions in society.

This Policy Brief argues that practitioners and scholars can work together better by pivoting from ‘big questions’ towards ‘big challenges’ and finding new ways of working collaboratively, especially by drawing lessons from successful collaborations rather than dwell on supposed tensions between scholars and practitioners.

Key points:

• COVID-19 has laid bare the capacity challenges faced by governments and exacerbated entrenched disadvantage and inequality. The pandemic has acted as an accelerant of many problems that confront governments, shining light on how decades of reform have eroded government capacity and bought to the fore deep divisions in society.
• Practitioners and scholars can work together on big challenges that confront us during the crisis and in the aftermath. We need a pivot from ‘big questions’ towards ‘big challenges’, so that public administration and management scholars can work closely with practitioners to address these challenges in real time.
• To make a difference we need new ways of working collaboratively. If we are keen to collaborate in this crisis and beyond it makes more sense to look to successful collaborations, rather than dwell on supposed tensions between scholars and practitioners.