The mitigating effects of political capacity and political alignment on COVID-19 mortality, an examination of Spanish Autonomous Communities

Abstract

ABSTRACT We analyze the first wave of COVID-19 fatalities in Spain at the subnational level to identify why some Autonomous Communities (ACs) were more successful at minimizing mortality levels. Our work adds to emerging literature on policy implications of pandemics and the role of governments in containing crises. Additionally, because national responses to crises are not homogeneous, we develop empirical measures of subnational political capacity. We investigate the relative capacity of governments in mobilizing the population to follow national health policy recommendations and extracting resources to implement those policies. Furthermore, we examine the effects of political alignment between the subnational and central governments in determining the country’s success containing the outbreak. Through a random-effects panel regression and a generalized additive model, we find that wealth and demography account for half of the variance in COVID-19 deaths across ACs, while including political capacity and alignment increases the variance explained above 70%.