Democracies or Authoritarians? Regime Differences in the Efficacy of Handling Covid-19 in 158 Countries
| Author | Chinglen Laishram,Pawan Kumar |
| DOI | 10.1177/00195561211042977 |
| Published date | 01 September 2021 |
| Date | 01 September 2021 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Democracies or
Authoritarians? Regime
Differences in the
Efficacy of Handling
Covid-19 in 158
Countries
Chinglen Laishram1 and Pawan Kumar2
Abstract
A new genre of contestation is seen in the discourse of democracy and governance
worldwide concerning efficacy in combating the Covid-19 pandemic, that is,
which regime is handling the pandemic better—authoritarian or democratic?
As a response to this debate, premised on the practicality that differences in
total confirmed cases and deaths reflect the raw quantity of government’s ability
to control and handle an infectious disease, we examined differences in the
reported number of total confirmed cases and deaths across the categories of
political regimes. We used regime classification from the Economist Intelligence
Unit’s (EIU) Democratic Index—full democracy, flawed democracy, hybrid and
authoritarian regime. The country-wise reported number of Covid-19 confirmed
cases and deaths were extracted from World Health Organization’s 6th Weekly
Epidemiological Report. The results spotlight that if the democratic countries are
inevitably more susceptible to pandemics, then we need to cautiously reassess
the notion of public health and pandemics in the context of political regimes.
Keywords
Covid-19, pandemic, public health, political regime, democracy, authoritarian
Article
1 Centre for Studies in Society and Development, Central University of Gujarat, Gujarat, India.
2 Centre for Gandhian Thought and Peace Studies, Central University of Gujarat, Gujarat, India.
Corresponding author:
Chinglen Laishram, UGC Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Studies in Society and Development,
Central University of Gujarat, Gandhinagar, Gujarat 382030, India.
E-mail: chinglenkhuman@gmail.com
Indian Journal of Public
Administration
67(3) 470–483, 2021
© 2021 IIPA
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DOI: 10.1177/00195561211042977
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