Regimes, leaders, and lockdowns: who responded more quickly to the COVID-19 pandemic?

Wehner, Joachim ORCID: 0000-0002-1951-308X and Hallerberg, Mark (2025) Regimes, leaders, and lockdowns: who responded more quickly to the COVID-19 pandemic? Journal of Politics. ISSN 0022-3816 (In Press)

Text (JOP combined_20250115_final) - Accepted Version Pending embargo until 1 January 2100. Available under License Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial. Download (10MB)

Abstract

Explanations of the speed of policy responses to COVID-19 highlight two sets of arguments. One focuses on regime type. Did autocracies, with fewer institutional constraints and high coercive power, lock down more quickly than democracies? The second concerns the “type” of health policymaker. Did governments led by doctors or natural scientists respond more quickly, and did men and populists delay lockdown? We examine these relationships with a global dataset of political regimes and relevant traits of 188 political leaders and health ministers in office at the start of the pandemic. Our setup addresses concerns about reciprocal causation and sample selection bias and proves robust to potential confounders. We find autocracies locked down more slowly than democracies, while leader traits appear not to matter. However, medical doctors in the health portfolio are associated with lower likelihood of lockdown, suggesting they may have provided cover for leaders hesitant to do so.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	© 2025 The Author(s)
Divisions:	Government
Subjects:	J Political Science R Medicine > RA Public aspects of medicine > RA0421 Public health. Hygiene. Preventive Medicine
Date Deposited:	06 Feb 2025 10:15
Last Modified:	13 Feb 2025 11:03
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/127190

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