I found an interesting article talking about a few factors that have dictated the success of some countries' response to the Covid 19. One of the things that stands out is that these measures can occur regardless of regime type. Therefore, I would be interested to see if some of these are important in addressing our RCE. One of the main problems with trying to analyse the Covid 19 outbreak is that we are still experiencing it and the effects of the outbreak are still at large. Therefore, it is hard to link the degree of success to regime type. Nevertheless, these factors are currently dictating success of countries' response to Covid 19.
One of these factors is that the countries who have recently dealt with epidemics have had experiences that helped them deal with the Covid 19 outbreak. For instance, countries such as Canada, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan 'took key lessons away from SARS: They developed speedy tests soon after the coronavirus began spreading and undertook broad testing to get one step ahead of the virus.' They also all had laws in place from the SARS epidemic that were easily transferable to Covid 19. This included tracking of individuals to alert them to be checked and enforced quarantines to hinder the outbreak.
Another factor that effects the success of countries during the Covid 19 outbreak is trust in the government by its people. This is because governments with high levels of trust can maintain lockdown for longer periods of time. 'Equally important, trust enabled some countries to convince their citizens to allow mass testing and quarantine before the virus’s effects were widely seen, allowing them to stop the spread early.' Trust is also not synonymous with regime type with many democracies and authoritarian regimes having high levels of trust and vice versa.
Furthermore, 'A government’s capacity—its ability to intervene competently in arenas from communication and health provision to quarantine maintenance and equipment manufacturing—is only loosely related to its GDP or overall type of political regime.' This affected how quickly, how many and the speed of results for government testing citizens. Once again regime was not the defining factor.
Thanks for the article, Daniel - really interesting. It may well be that regime type does not matter much in the COVID19 pandemic (or at least that other factors, such as trust or capacity, matter much more). What aspects of a democratic/authoritarian regime might seem to help/hinder in controlling a pandemic?
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