Democracy, State Capacity, and COVID-19 Related School Closures

Cronert, Axel

doi:10.33774/apsa-2020-jf671

Cited by 11 publications

(37 citation statements)

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“…Tracking data from smartphones, research has also shown similar partisan divides among individuals: areas of the United States with more Republicans practice less social distancing (Allcott et al, 2020;Barrios and Hochberg, 2020). In a cross-country context, Cronert (2020) show that more democratic governments were faster to shut down schools, though governments with higher state capacity were slower to do so. Our analysis, by contrast, focuses on the number of per capita deaths related to COVID-19 in the early stages of the pandemic.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 93%

Political Regimes and Deaths in the Early Stages of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Cepaluni

Dorsch

Branyiczki

2020

Preprint

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This paper provides a quantitative examination of the link between political institutions and deaths during the first 100 days of the COVID-19 pandemic. We demonstrate that countries with more democratic political institutions experienced deaths on a larger per capita scale and sooner than less democratic countries. The result is robust to the inclusion of many relevant controls, a battery of estimation techniques, and to estimation with instruments for the institutional measures that we consider. Additionally, we examine the extent to which COVID-19 deaths were impacted heterogeneously by policy responses across types of political institutions. Policy responses in democracies were less effective in reducing deaths in the early stages of the crisis. The results imply that democratic political institutions may have a disadvantage in responding quickly to pandemics.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 93%

Political Regimes and Deaths in the Early Stages of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Cepaluni

Dorsch

Branyiczki

2020

Preprint

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“…Interestingly, those with high government effectiveness were slower to implement such policies [36] as were the more right-leaning governments [37]. Further, more democratic countries have tended to be more sensitive to the domestic policy decisions of other countries [38].…”

Section: Politicalmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Further, more democratic countries have tended to be more sensitive to the domestic policy decisions of other countries [38]. Regardless, the need to understand the reasons behind the selection of some policy instruments and not others [36] and the associated timing of such decisions is warranted to enable the development and implementation of more appropriate policy…”

Section: Politicalmentioning

confidence: 99%

How Does Globalization Affect COVID-19 Responses?

Bickley

Chan

Skali

et al. 2020

Preprint

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Background: The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the vast differences in approaches to the control and containment of coronavirus across the world and has demonstrated the varied success of such approaches in minimizing the transmission of coronavirus. While previous studies have demonstrated high predictive power of incorporating air travel data and governmental policy responses in global disease transmission modelling, factors influencing the decision to implement travel and border restriction policies have attracted relatively less attention. This paper examines the role of globalization on the pace of adoption of international travel-related non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) during the coronavirus pandemic. This study aims to offer advice on how to improve the global planning, preparation, and coordination of actions and policy responses during future infectious disease outbreaks with empirical evidence.Results: The results of our survival analysis suggest that more globalized countries, accounting for the country-specific timing of the virus outbreak and other factors, are quicker to adopt international travel restrictions policies. However, countries with high government effectiveness were more cautious in the implementation of travel restrictions if they are more globalized, particularly if through formal political and trade policy integration. This finding is supported by a placebo analysis on domestic NPIs, where such a relationship is absent. Additionally, we find that globalized countries with high state capacity are more likely to have higher numbers of confirmed cases by the time a first restriction policy measure was taken. Conclusions: The findings highlight the dynamic relationship between globalization and protectionism when governments respond to significant global events such as a public health crisis. We suggest that the observed caution of policy implementation by countries with high government efficiency and globalization is a by-product of commitment to existing trade agreements, a greater desire to ‘learn from others’ and also perhaps of ‘confidence’ in a government’s ability to deal with a pandemic through its health system and state capacity. Our results suggest further research is warranted to explore whether global infectious disease forecasting could be improved by including the globalization index and in particular, the de jure trade and political (sub)dimensions and de facto interpersonal and cultural (sub)dimensions of globalization. By acting as proxies for a countries’ likelihood and speed of implementation for international travel restriction policies, such measures may predict the likely time delays in disease emergence and transmission across national borders.

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“…[25][26][27][28] ), when they decided to implement them 29,30 , who they were targeted towards 31,32 and what state capacity they possessed to do so 33,34 have all significantly influenced how the virus has affected health outcomes both within and across different country contexts [35][36][37] , all of which are readily captured by this dataset 38,39 . Equally important is understanding why countries adopt different policies, with early analyses suggesting that institutional and political factors, for example, the authoritarian or democratic nature of the institutions of a country 40 or its level of political partisanship 41 , play an important role. These findings will not only help improve the global response to the current crisis but can also build an influential foundation of knowledge for responding to future outbreaks 42,43 .…”

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confidence: 99%

COVID-19 Government Response Event Dataset (CoronaNet v.1.0)

et al. 2020

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Governments worldwide have implemented countless policies in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. We present an initial public release of a large hand-coded dataset of over 13,000 such policy announcements across more than 195 countries. The dataset is updated daily, with a 5-day lag for validity checking. We document policies across numerous dimensions, including the type of policy, national versus subnational enforcement, the specific human group and geographical region targeted by the policy, and the time frame within which each policy is implemented. We further analyse the dataset using a Bayesian measurement model, which shows the quick acceleration of the adoption of costly policies across countries beginning in mid-March 2020 through 24 May 2020. We believe that these data will be instrumental for helping policymakers and researchers assess, among other objectives, how effective different policies are in addressing the spread and health outcomes of COVID-19.

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Democracy, State Capacity, and COVID-19 Related School Closures

Cited by 11 publications

References 0 publications

Political Regimes and Deaths in the Early Stages of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Political Regimes and Deaths in the Early Stages of the COVID-19 Pandemic

How Does Globalization Affect COVID-19 Responses?

COVID-19 Government Response Event Dataset (CoronaNet v.1.0)

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