Government and Citizen Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic

Session Submission Type: Virtual Created Panel

Session Description

This panel analyzes government and citizen responses to the COVID-19 pandemic and their political, economic, and social effects. Policymakers in many countries faced the electoral dilemma of whether to save lives or the economy. In Russia, experimental research suggests that saving lives increases support for policy but saving the economy boosts support for expanded official powers. In Kazakhstan, analysis suggests that governments’ COVID-19 policy implementation may employ a variety of coercive and information-based strategies. The most coercive approach is evident in China, where government is using repression to achieve dual public health and public security goals. Papers on this panel employ a range of methods and present novel empirical evidence to illuminate the politics of government and citizen responses to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Sub Unit

• Division 13: Politics of Communist and Former Communist Countries

Individual Presentations

• The Coercive Capacity of COVID-19 Policies: Rule of Law and Rule of Fear? - Paula Daniela Ganga, Columbia University; Caress Rene Schenk, Nazarbaev University

• Saving Lives or the Economy? The Incumbent Support During the Pandemic in Russia - Kirill Chmel, National Research University "Higher School of Economics"; Aigul Klimova; Nikita Savin, National Research University "Higher School of Economics"

• Where is the Real Conspiracy? Covid and Post-Communist Democratic Decay - Nikolay V. Marinov, University of Houston; Maria Popova, McGill University

• The Epidemiologization of Politics and the Preventive Repression in Xinjiang - Seyfullah Ozkurt

Chair

• Ziyi Wu Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Discussant

• Olesya Tkacheva Free University of Brussels (VUB)