COVID-19, Mental Health and Political Participation: Evidence from Indian States

• In Event: COVID-19 and Voting Behavior

Abstract

The literature on mental health and political participation offers rich and nuanced hypotheses highlighting the differential effect of mental health challenges, depending on age (Ojeda, 2015), measures of mental health (Stockemer & Rapp, 2019), the level of government at which participation is evaluated (Couture & Breux, 2017), and the type of political participation involved (B.C. Burden, J.M. Fletcher, Herd, Jones, & Moynihan, 2016; Chiu & Chan, 2007). Till date, however, this research has focused exclusively on high income countries with stable and institutionalized welfare systems.


This study aims to contribute to this research in two important ways. First, it evaluates the political consequences of mental challenges using cross-regional survey data from India, a large democracy at a low level of economic development overall, but with sharp intra-country variation in the level of development. Second, it does so in the specific context of the COVID-19 crisis, exploiting a novel tracker dataset collected by CVoter Foundation, an internationally recognized polling firm, between March-April 2020, which surveyed nationally representative samples of respondents on a range of questions related to the potential mental health challenges posed by the crisis.

The CVoter dataset was collected in three waves from 25 Indian states. Wave 1 covered 1403 respondents and was collected during the Week ending March 22; Wave 2 covered 1477 respondents and was collected during the week ending March 29; Wave 3 covered 1760 respondents and was collected during the week ending April 5. The dataset includes questions that were repeated across all waves – e.g. Which party will you vote for if National/State elections are held today? (response options listed are party name to be coded from a pre-given list; will not vote; not listed in voter list; don’t know/can’t say; NOTA); How strongly do you agree or disagree with the following statements? I am afraid that either myself or someone in my family may actually catch the Coronavirus (response options listed are don’t know/can’t say; strongly agree; agree; disagree; strongly agree) – and questions that varied by waves, depending on emerging issues - e.g. while Wave 1, which was conducted in the early stages of the crisis, queried respondents on levels of stress, Wave 2 asked questions about coping mechanisms. Consequently, it offers rich cross-sectional and temporal variation to assess a range of hypotheses covering different types of mental health challenges and different forms of participation.

In particular, this study aims to test the following set of hypotheses derived from the extant literature and case-based evidence:

H1. Individuals who report higher levels of mental stress will be less likely to vote in elections.
H2. Individuals who report higher levels of mental stress will be less likely to vote in state elections, but no less likely to vote in national elections.
H3. Individuals who report higher levels of mental stress will be less likely to report partisan attitudes towards leaders/political parties.
H4. The effect of mental stress on political attitudes will be mediated by the level of effort expended on combating mental stress, such as, for example, seeking psychiatric help, listening to motivational speakers etc.
H5. The effect of mental stress on political attitudes will be mediated by the timing of the survey. Non-participation propensities should be higher among the mentally challenged in Wave 3 compared to Wave 1 and Wave 2 (the central government’s controversial total lockdown policy, with its attendant consequences for loss of freedom of movement, came into effect on 24 March, while the second wave survey was ongoing).

The 2021 APSA meeting has adopted “Pluralism” as its core theme. Although COVID-19 has imposed enormous challenges for political integration for large sections of the populace across the globe, the particular political challenges faced by individuals with mental health deficiencies in this context merits greater scholarly exploration than it has hitherto received. The proposed study hopes to fill this gap.

References:

B.C. Burden, J.M. Fletcher, Herd, P., Jones, B. M., & Moynihan, D. P. (2016). How Different Forms of Health Matter to Political Participation. The Journal of Politics, 79(1), 166-178.

Chiu, M., & Chan, K. (2007). The Politics of Citizenship Formation: Political Participation of Mental Health Service Users in Hong Kong. Asian Journal of Social Science, 35(2), 195-215.

Couture, J., & Breux, S. (2017). The differentiated effects of health on political participation. European Journal of Public Health, 27(4), 599–604.

Ojeda, C. (2015). Depression and Political Participation. Social Science Quarterly, 96(5), 1226-1243.

Stockemer, D., & Rapp, C. (2019). The influence of various measures of health on different types of political participation. Politics, 39(4), 480-513.

Author

• Subhasish Ray, Jindal School of Government and Public Policy, O. P. Jindal Global University