The politics of Covid-19 containment policies in Europe

Plumper, Thomas and Neumayer, Eric ORCID: 0000-0003-2719-7563 (2022) The politics of Covid-19 containment policies in Europe. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 81. ISSN 2212-4209

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Abstract

Do partisan preferences, the electoral system, checks on government, political fragmentation, civil liberties and trust contribute to explaining the stringency of containment policies in European countries? Empirical studies suggest that political science theories have helped very little in under¬standing European democracies’ political response to the pandemic’s first wave. We argue in this article that the negligible effect of politics, broadly defined, is confined to the first wave and that during subsequent waves over the autumn 2020 to spring 2021 season some of the above political factors contribute to our understanding of variation in countries’ response. Employing a sample of 26 European democracies analyzing daily data on the stringency of adopted containment policies we provide evidence that politics does not matter during the first wave but is substantively important during later waves.

Item Type:	Article
Official URL:	https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/internationa...
Additional Information:	© 2022 Elsevier Ltd
Divisions:	Geography & Environment
Subjects:	R Medicine > RA Public aspects of medicine > RA0421 Public health. Hygiene. Preventive Medicine H Social Sciences > HV Social pathology. Social and public welfare. Criminology J Political Science > JN Political institutions (Europe)
Date Deposited:	01 Aug 2022 09:12
Last Modified:	16 Nov 2024 20:09
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/115722

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