Regimes and Epidemics: Insights into the COVID-19 Pandemic

• In Event: Relevance, Quality, and Expedience: Political Science Responds to COVID-19: COVID-19 in Comparative Perspective

Abstract

Are democracies less effective than autocracies in responding to epidemics? Journalists and pundits have speculated that democratic freedoms and processes are limiting democratic countries’ abilities to quickly implement stringent measures to save lives during the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet, there is scant research on regime types’ impact on epidemics; it is mostly limited to HIV/AIDS. We first take a historical approach and investigate democracies’ impact on all epidemics from 1900 to 2018 using crossectional regression analysis with Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) regime type data and EM-DAT epidemic data. Taking advantage of the 470-plus V-Dem indicators of aspects of democracy, we also test to what extent particular democratic practices and institutions, such as civil liberties, affect epidemic outcomes. Rarely have works on democracy and public health disaggregated democracy. Second, we demonstrate how COVID-19 death rate are currently too provisional to draw conclusions about regime types’ impact on that pandemic. Finally, we examine how past epidemics are similar to or different from COVID-19 and thus in what ways our findings about past epidemics may apply to the current pandemic. The authors are a political scientist and epidemiologist, respectively, so they bring to this research the two areas of expertise essential to exploring this topic.

Authors

• Kelly M. McMann, Case Western Reserve University

• Daniel Tisch, School of Medicine, Case Western Reserve University