The capacity of a state and the degree of economic inequality among its residents will determine how successful it is in coping effectively with a pandemic like COVID-19. Whether it is a democracy or a dictatorship matters relatively less, according to recent research by Wharton management professor Mauro Guillen.
Titled, “The Politics of Pandemics: Democracy, State Capacity, and Economic Inequality,” Guillen’s working paper tracks epidemic outbreaks in 146 countries since 1995. It is the first study to explore the effects of democracy, state capacity, and income inequality on epidemic dynamics.
“In democracies, greater transparency, accountability, and public trust reduce the frequency and lethality of epidemics, shorten response time, and enhance people’s compliance with public health measures,” Guillen wrote in his paper. However, “democracy has no effects on the likelihood and lethality of epidemics.”
According to the paper, inequality increases the frequency and scale of an epidemic, and it undermines people’s compliance with epidemic containment policies such as social distancing and sheltering in place because people at the low end of the socioeconomic scale cannot afford to stay at home—they must go to work. But strong state and government structures could help offset most of the shortcomings. “State capacity is a bulwark against the occurrence and ill effects of crises and emergencies, while economic inequality exacerbates them,” Guillen wrote.
Takeaways for Governments
“The most important result in my analysis is that you have to have the resources, the capacity and the [requisite] state structures in place to deal with these national emergencies,” said Guillen. “Countries that score higher in state capacity, because they have more resourceful governments, regardless which party is running it, have fewer of these epidemics. And if they have one, they tend to have fewer deaths and cases.”
The second takeaway from the study is that “for the most part, it doesn’t really matter whether you’re a democracy or a dictatorship,” he added. “But inequality can make the consequences of all of this much, much worse, especially in terms of the number of people affected.”
He explained that a high degree of economic inequality means that people don’t have good nutrition or access to health care, and they don’t have savings or other resources. “Even during a pandemic, they have to continue working and use public transportation. So they don’t observe social distancing or sheltering-in-place and therefore they become more exposed to the potential consequences of the virus.”
“Countries that score higher in state capacity, because they have more resourceful governments, regardless which party is running it, have fewer of these epidemics.” –Mauro Guillen
‘Mosaic of Experiences’
What interested Guillen about the pandemic is “the mosaic of experiences around the world” — both in the way in which countries are affected by it and how their governments respond. He noted that while the pandemic is global, it is felt in very different ways around the world, and also that it didn’t start in every country at the same time. There is also a wide variation in the responses by governments and by people in different countries.
He said he was “specifically interested in seeing whether politics has anything to do with how effectively countries deal with these kinds of situations or crises.” He also noticed in the debates on the pandemic that “there were some misconceptions about the relative ability of different types of political regimes to intervene.”
Guillen identified “three big debates” around the pandemic. One is about whether democracies do a better job or a worse job than dictatorships in managing health crises. (He clarified that he used the term dictatorships to refer to non-democracies of various types, including those that are totalitarian or authoritarian.) The second is over whether the governments are prepared with the requisite capacity to deal with health emergencies. The third debate is on how economic inequality makes a country vulnerable to relatively harsher consequences than others that are better off on that score. Guillen decided to delve into the data to bring more clarity to those three debates.
He conducted three studies to ascertain the impact of political regime, state capacity and economic inequality on “epidemic dynamics.” The first reviewed the occurrence and lethality of epidemic outbreaks worldwide between 1990 and 2019. The second analyzed the speed with which a government-mandated lockdown came into being during COVID-19 “as the most dramatic policy to curb the spread of a contagious disease.” The third study examined people’s compliance with social distancing and sheltering-in-place measures across countries during 60 days of the pandemic.
Guillen also looked at how the form of government interacts with state capacity to cope with a health emergency or with economic inequality. Being a democracy and having state capacity are not always correlated, said Guillen. Some democracies are newly independent countries and relatively poor, and they don’t have strong government programs. “Over the last 20 years, we’ve seen a lot of these countries — for example, in Africa — becoming democracies. But they lack resources and they lack strong government programs. Those are the most vulnerable, and this is why we see that so many epidemics ravage the developing world.”
It gets worse for poor countries that remain dictatorships. “They face a double whammy because they don’t have resources, and they don’t have strong government programs,” said Guillen. Further, in dictatorships, the population typically does not have much trust in the government and its responses to an epidemic, he added. “That’s the worst of all situations.”
The study found that countries with high population densities are generally more vulnerable to epidemics and have a lower ability to bring them under control. They need to put more systems in place to prevent epidemic outbreaks, said Guillen.
However, some countries that have very high population densities are also very rich — like Japan, Singapore or Holland, Guillen pointed out. “They don’t have epidemics because they compensate with very strong government programs,” he said, adding that they can afford those programs because they are wealthy.
As the COVID-19 pandemic continues its spread, it is far too early to take stock and identify winners and losers among countries. However, South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore are among a few countries stand out for having state capacity and strong government programs in place to deal with such emergencies, said Guillen.
Those countries had strong government programs in public health in particular because they are rich countries, and also because they became wiser after having encountered health emergencies like SARS in the past, he noted. The strength of their state capacity and public health programs mattered more than the form of government, he added.
South Korea, Taiwan and Iceland also showed low economic inequality in Guillen’s research. That buttressed his finding that the greater the economic inequality, the more the likelihood of an epidemic outbreak, and with more consequences than countries with better scores on that measure.
At the other end of the spectrum, inadequate or fragmented state capacity was the reason why countries in Southern Europe like Spain and Italy have suffered heavily in the pandemic. It didn’t seem to matter that they are democracies – their governments have been “completely disorganized” in their response to the pandemic, Guillen said. “The problem there has been that they don’t have the resources that some of those other countries in Europe had in place.” To boot, the degree of economic inequality in Southern Europe is also higher than in Northern and Central Europe, he noted.
“Being a democracy helps in general, because it’s easier for you as a government to generate trust among the population in order to cope with a pandemic,” said Guillen. “But if you don’t have strong government resources or capabilities, then you’re going to be at a disadvantage.”
“Being a democracy helps in general, because it’s easier for you as a government to generate trust among the population in order to cope with a pandemic.” –Mauro Guillen
Pointers from the Past
Drawing upon previous research by Guillen and other experts, the paper traced the quality of government responses in earlier crises such as the East Asian financial crisis in 1997, the Arab Spring in 2010 and the 2008-2010 global financial crisis.
The outcomes of those crises were mixed. In the East Asian crisis, for instance, South Korea had preexisting ties with its business and financial sectors, which enabled it able to respond more effectively than Thailand did. Semi-authoritarian regimes like Malaysia or dictatorial regimes like Indonesia took action more swiftly, but with less consistency, and with uncertain outcomes due to favoritism and corruption, Guillen’s research showed.
The 2008-2010 global financial crisis primarily affected high-income democracies. Although “several governments on both sides of the Atlantic were defeated at the polls, democracy itself survived and economic growth resumed relatively quickly in most countries,” according to research by Guillen and another study by Stanford University political science professor Larry Diamond.
By contrast, the Arab Spring led to “the downfall of several governments, the overthrow of political regimes, a continued economic slide, and, in some cases, civil war,” Guillen’s paper noted, citing a United Nations survey of 2015-2016.
Who Fares Better: Dictatorships or Democracies?
While democracies fared relatively better than dictatorships in previous crises, they may face different challenges with the COVID-19 pandemic “in terms of the sacrifices that it demands from the population in order to contain it,” Guillen noted in his paper. Dictatorships can respond “more swiftly and resolutely” in imposing quarantines and enforcing other steps that infringe on individual liberties.
On the other hand, greater transparency in democracies may allow them to respond promptly to a public-health emergency, and secure public trust and collaboration. The paper notes that research by The Economist on epidemics since 1960 found lower mortality rates in democracies than in dictatorships. All considered, Guillen’s research suggests that democracies structurally lend themselves to more effective responses to epidemics than dictatorships.
The upshot from those previous episodes: With democracy, economies have the opportunity to recover after a crisis. Without democracy, economies may continue to slide, favoritism and corruption may rule the day, and governments may fall.
“The pandemic came the moment when global cooperation on key issues, such as climate change, was at an all-time low.” –Mauro Guillen
Guillen agreed that governments in democracies face constraints such as the need for building a consensus, or have to make trade-offs in multiparty politics that result in less than optimal policy responses. “That’s one of the potential dysfunctions of democracy,” he said.
“But on the other hand, in a democracy, the government can be voted out,” Guillen continued. “The government wants to have at least majority support among the population, and so it has an interest in delivering a certain standard of well-being to a majority of the population.”
Most dictatorships, however, tend to ensure that they will continue to run the country by allocating subsidies and rents to a few important groups that support it, he added.
Guillen’s research produced some surprises, too. He did expect countries with income inequality to have reduced compliance in social distancing because they would have more people who live “from paycheck to paycheck, who need to go to work.” But he was surprised that democracy didn’t have an effect on social distancing. He had thought that those measures are easier to implement in democracies where people have more trust in their governments than in dictatorships. “But I didn’t find that effect at all,” he said. “I found no difference between democracies and dictatorships when it came to compliance with social distancing and sheltering-in-place [guidelines].”
International Cooperation
For sure, countries suddenly facing a pandemic cannot overnight fill gaps in government capacity or economic resilience, or economic inequalities among their populations. Here, international cooperation could help overcome shortcomings.
“Every infectious disease outbreak is a problem for the entire world, not just for one country, especially when it becomes a pandemic,” said Guillen. “So, it’s extremely unfortunate that right now very few countries are talking to each other. Part of this is because we came from a period of turmoil in the world, not knowing what the role of the U.S. was, for example, and having trade wars and other kinds of frictions in the world. It’s unfortunate that the pandemic came the moment when global cooperation on key issues, such as climate change, was at an all-time low.”
That is unfortunate because in a pandemic, it is essential that governments exchange information about the spread of the disease and about what works and doesn’t work in containing the spread of the virus, he noted. The World Health Organization has been trying to forge international collaborations to try and develop effective therapeutic treatments and a vaccine for COVID-19. “It is unfortunate that the one organization that we have that can help coordinate global actions in the midst of a pandemic is under attack.”
HALIFAX – Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston says it’s “disgraceful and demeaning” that a Halifax-area school would request that service members not wear military uniforms to its Remembrance Day ceremony.
Houston’s comments were part of a chorus of criticism levelled at the school — Sackville Heights Elementary — whose administration decided to back away from the plan after the outcry.
A November newsletter from the school in Middle Sackville, N.S., invited Armed Forces members to attend its ceremony but asked that all attendees arrive in civilian attire to “maintain a welcoming environment for all.”
Houston, who is currently running for re-election, accused the school’s leaders of “disgracing themselves while demeaning the people who protect our country” in a post on the social media platform X Thursday night.
“If the people behind this decision had a shred of the courage that our veterans have, this cowardly and insulting idea would have been rejected immediately,” Houston’s post read. There were also several calls for resignations within the school’s administration attached to Houston’s post.
In an email to families Thursday night, the school’s principal, Rachael Webster, apologized and welcomed military family members to attend “in the attire that makes them most comfortable.”
“I recognize this request has caused harm and I am deeply sorry,” Webster’s email read, adding later that the school has the “utmost respect for what the uniform represents.”
Webster said the initial request was out of concern for some students who come from countries experiencing conflict and who she said expressed discomfort with images of war, including military uniforms.
Her email said any students who have concerns about seeing Armed Forces members in uniform can be accommodated in a way that makes them feel safe, but she provided no further details in the message.
Webster did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
At a news conference Friday, Houston said he’s glad the initial request was reversed but said he is still concerned.
“I can’t actually fathom how a decision like that was made,” Houston told reporters Friday, adding that he grew up moving between military bases around the country while his father was in the Armed Forces.
“My story of growing up in a military family is not unique in our province. The tradition of service is something so many of us share,” he said.
“Saying ‘lest we forget’ is a solemn promise to the fallen. It’s our commitment to those that continue to serve and our commitment that we will pass on our respects to the next generation.”
Liberal Leader Zach Churchill also said he’s happy with the school’s decision to allow uniformed Armed Forces members to attend the ceremony, but he said he didn’t think it was fair to question the intentions of those behind the original decision.
“We need to have them (uniforms) on display at Remembrance Day,” he said. “Not only are we celebrating (veterans) … we’re also commemorating our dead who gave the greatest sacrifice for our country and for the freedoms we have.”
NDP Leader Claudia Chender said that while Remembrance Day is an important occasion to honour veterans and current service members’ sacrifices, she said she hopes Houston wasn’t taking advantage of the decision to “play politics with this solemn occasion for his own political gain.”
“I hope Tim Houston reached out to the principal of the school before making a public statement,” she said in a statement.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.
REGINA – Saskatchewan Opposition NDP Leader Carla Beck says she wants to prove to residents her party is the government in waiting as she heads into the incoming legislative session.
Beck held her first caucus meeting with 27 members, nearly double than what she had before the Oct. 28 election but short of the 31 required to form a majority in the 61-seat legislature.
She says her priorities will be health care and cost-of-living issues.
Beck says people need affordability help right now and will press Premier Scott Moe’s Saskatchewan Party government to cut the gas tax and the provincial sales tax on children’s clothing and some grocery items.
Beck’s NDP is Saskatchewan’s largest Opposition in nearly two decades after sweeping Regina and winning all but one seat in Saskatoon.
The Saskatchewan Party won 34 seats, retaining its hold on all of the rural ridings and smaller cities.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.
HALIFAX – Nova Scotia‘s growing population was the subject of debate on Day 12 of the provincial election campaign, with Liberal Leader Zach Churchill arguing immigration levels must be reduced until the province can provide enough housing and health-care services.
Churchill said Thursday a plan by the incumbent Progressive Conservatives to double the province’s population to two million people by the year 2060 is unrealistic and unsustainable.
“That’s a big leap and it’s making life harder for people who live here, (including ) young people looking for a place to live and seniors looking to downsize,” he told a news conference at his campaign headquarters in Halifax.
Anticipating that his call for less immigration might provoke protests from the immigrant community, Churchill was careful to note that he is among the third generation of a family that moved to Nova Scotia from Lebanon.
“I know the value of immigration, the importance of it to our province. We have been built on the backs of an immigrant population. But we just need to do it in a responsible way.”
The Liberal leader said Tim Houston’s Tories, who are seeking a second term in office, have made a mistake by exceeding immigration targets set by the province’s Department of Labour and Immigration. Churchill said a Liberal government would abide by the department’s targets.
In the most recent fiscal year, the government welcomed almost 12,000 immigrants through its nominee program, exceeding the department’s limit by more than 4,000, he said. The numbers aren’t huge, but the increase won’t help ease the province’s shortages in housing and doctors, and the increased strain on its infrastructure, including roads, schools and cellphone networks, Churchill said.
“(The Immigration Department) has done the hard work on this,” he said. “They know where the labour gaps are, and they know what growth is sustainable.”
In response, Houston said his commitment to double the population was a “stretch goal.” And he said the province had long struggled with a declining population before that trend was recently reversed.
“The only immigration that can come into this province at this time is if they are a skilled trade worker or a health-care worker,” Houston said. “The population has grown by two per cent a year, actually quite similar growth to what we experienced under the Liberal government before us.”
Still, Houston said he’s heard Nova Scotians’ concerns about population growth, and he then pivoted to criticize Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for trying to send 6,000 asylum seekers to Nova Scotia, an assertion the federal government has denied.
Churchill said Houston’s claim about asylum seekers was shameful.
“It’s smoke and mirrors,” the Liberal leader said. “He is overshooting his own department’s numbers for sustainable population growth and yet he is trying to blame this on asylum seekers … who aren’t even here.”
In September, federal Immigration Minister Marc Miller said there is no plan to send any asylum seekers to the province without compensation or the consent of the premier. He said the 6,000 number was an “aspirational” figure based on models that reflect each province’s population.
In Halifax, NDP Leader Claudia Chender said it’s clear Nova Scotia needs more doctors, nurses and skilled trades people.
“Immigration has been and always will be a part of the Nova Scotia story, but we need to build as we grow,” Chender said. “This is why we have been pushing the Houston government to build more affordable housing.”
Chender was in a Halifax cafe on Thursday when she promised her party would remove the province’s portion of the harmonized sales tax from all grocery, cellphone and internet bills if elected to govern on Nov. 26. The tax would also be removed from the sale and installation of heat pumps.
“Our focus is on helping people to afford their lives,” Chender told reporters. “We know there are certain things that you can’t live without: food, internet and a phone …. So we know this will have the single biggest impact.”
The party estimates the measure would save the average Nova Scotia family about $1,300 a year.
“That’s a lot more than a one or two per cent HST cut,” Chender said, referring to the Progressive Conservative pledge to reduce the tax by one percentage point and the Liberal promise to trim it by two percentage points.
Elsewhere on the campaign trail, Houston announced that a Progressive Conservative government would make parking free at all Nova Scotia hospitals and health-care centres. The promise was also made by the Liberals in their election platform released Monday.
“Free parking may not seem like a big deal to some, but … the parking, especially for people working at the facilities, can add up to hundreds of dollars,” the premier told a news conference at his campaign headquarters in Halifax.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 7, 2024.
