The politics of COVID-19: Government response in comparative perspective

Abstract

Since its appearance in Wuhan (China) in late December 2019, the geographical spread of COVID-19 and its constituent waves varied in pace and intensity around the world. Responses to the pandemic also varied across the world with high variation in case rates, death rates, and estimated excess mortality rates. This article addresses the political factors that may have shaped this variation. We test the proposition that the observed variation in case rates, death rates, and estimated excess mortality can be partly explained by differences across levels of democracy and autocracy, while controlling for additional possible confounding factors using a cross-section time-series data set for 155 countries between January 2020 and December 2021. The analysis begins with a theoretical consideration of the different ways in which democratic and authoritarian governments can respond to national emergencies such as a global pandemic and the expected effect of regime features on that response. For reported case rates and death rates, our analysis shows that democracies have a far worse record of pandemic response and control than autocracies. For estimated excess mortality rates and the ratio of these rates to reported death rates, however, our analysis shows that variation is more tightly captured by clusters of poor democracies and poor autocracies in particular geographies in the world. The difference in results for recorded COVID data and estimated excess mortality suggest that transparency in reporting within democracies may explain an otherwise spurious relationship between regime type and COVID response. Our findings suggest that future pandemics and other public health threats require much better coordination, control, and transparent reporting protocols that are less encumbered by politics than has been observable during the COVID-19 pandemic.