Ebola and State Legitimacy

Abstract

We exploit the West African Ebola epidemic as an event that necessitated the provision of a common-interest public good, Ebola control measures, to empirically investigate the effect of public good provision on state legitimacy. Our results show that state legitimacy, measured by trust in government authorities, increased with exposure to the epidemic. We argue, supported by results from SMS-message-based surveys, that a potentially important channel underlying this finding is a greater valuation of control measures in regions with intense transmission. Evidence further indicates that the effects of Ebola exposure are more pronounced in areas where governments responded relatively robustly to the epidemic.

Epidemics and trust: The case of the Spanish Flu

“…This is a quite interesting result, especially in the light of the work by Flückiger et al. (2019) on the Ebola outbreak in Africa. In fact, while for Ebola there is no effect on social trust but a positive one on trust in government, just the opposite seems to be true for the Spanish flu.…”

“…But given the (relatively) small scale, it is not at all sure that an Ebola epidemic would have a big impact on social trust. In fact, a recent study found evidence that effective public intervention to contain Ebola outbreaks might have actually increased trust in government authorities (Flückiger, Ludwig, & SinaÖnder, 2019). The same study, however, did not find a strong effect on social trust.…”

Africa’s lockdown dilemma: High poverty and low trust

“…Close engagement with local communities and innovative thinking around how to contain the virus are critical. And here there may be a silver lining-if governments prove effective in handling the crisis, public trust in government could increase as a consequence (Flückiger et al 2019).…”

Dangerous liaisons: an online experiment on the role of scientific experts and politicians in ensuring public support for anti-COVID measures

“…However, during a pandemic, as suggested in [15], the possibility of overcoming such cooperation traps that are intrinsic to widespread regulation compliance depends on pre-existing trust in experts, the capacity of governments to coordinate policy instruments and make choices about the degree of coercion, and the pro-social motivations of the public. As suggested by research on previous public health emergencies, public communication is key to develop trust and stimulate pro-social behaviour [16][17][18]. Indeed, in Italy, political leaders co-opted scientific experts during public announcements to promote compliance, as an incessant flow of news and expert comments on COVID-19 dominated all media.…”