Horizontal and Vertical Integration Are More Necessary Than Ever for COVID-19 Recovery and SDG Implementation

By putting stress on national socio-economic systems, the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed new tensions and trade-offs among policy areas, and exacerbated already existing tensions. In many countries heavily affected by the pandemic, this has revealed problems of lack of policy integration and policy coherence, both within and across sectors as well as across levels of government. Integrated policy-making has been critical in responding effectively to the pandemic, and will be paramount in post-COVID recovery to realize the Sustainable Development Goals.