Regimes and COVID-19

• In Event: Political Institutions, Policies, and Public Health

Abstract

Are democracies less effective than autocracies in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic? 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. The few studies to examine this topic have found a positive association between democracy and COVID-19 deaths (Cepaluni 2020 et al., Mazzucchelli 2020 et al., Sorci 2020 et al.). Yet, our research has shown that these findings reflect the geographic evolution of the pandemic and varied reporting of deaths, rather than an actual negative impact of democracy (McMann and Tisch 2020). Our proposed paper will examine regime types’ impact on COVID-19 deaths using more accurate death data and Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) regime data in a global cross-sectional analysis. By late summer 2021 the virus will have been in all countries of the world for an extended period of time and countries with lower reporting capacity will have had time to correct their death tallies, factors that will improve the accuracy of the data. Also, taking advantage of the 470-plus V-Dem indicators of aspects of democracy, we will test to what extent particular democratic practices and institutions, such as civil liberties, affect COVID-19 outcomes. Rarely have works on democracy and public health disaggregated democracy. 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