Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/308013 
Year of Publication: 
2023
Citation: 
[Journal:] Democratization [ISSN:] 1743-890X [Volume:] 30 [Issue:] 5 [Publisher:] Taylor & Francis [Place:] London [Year:] 2023 [Pages:] 938-959
Publisher: 
Taylor & Francis, London
Abstract: 
Governments around the world have been implementing measures to contain the COVID-19 pandemic and ease its economic fallout, and there has been extensive variation in the speed and extent to which they have introduced new policies. This article examines the role that regime type plays in determining the decisiveness of government policies to tackle the coronavirus pandemic and its spill over effects. We hypothesize that democratic regimes may be slower to introduce restrictions on civil liberties due to a “freedom commitment” and may be faster to provide economic protections due to a “welfare commitment”. We use event history analysis and data from the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker to examine whether less democratic regimes are more likely to implement restrictions faster, and spending programmes slower. Contrary to expectations, our findings suggest that more authoritarian regimes do not implement constraints more quickly or spending more slowly than more democratic regimes. The finding holds across various regime measures and model specifications.
Subjects: 
COVID-19
containment policies
economic policies
regime type
institutions
quantitative analysis
event history analysis
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Creative Commons License: 
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Document Type: 
Article
Document Version: 
Published Version

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