China has declared victory over the new coronavirus and begun to close its temporary hospitals. Singapore’s coronavirus chief wept while thanking healthcare workers for their efforts. Meanwhile, Spanish officials have requisitioned an ice rink as a makeshift morgue, and nurses in the United States are begging for hand-sewn masks. The stark contrasts raise a pointed question about governance: Are authoritarian countries doing a better job than democratic ones in arresting the coronavirus?
China is certainly engaged in an English-language propaganda campaign to depict its response as an effective deployment of high-tech authoritarianism that rapidly contained the virus and bought the world time. It’s buttressing the message by sending medical equipment and experts to other countries, and spreading a false story that the illness originated as U.S. military bioterrorism. Mounting a propaganda campaign of his own, President Donald Trump issued guidelines to slap the pandemic with a “Made in China” label and blame China’s authoritarianism and censorship for early delays that allowed a potentially containable virus to infect the world.
Despite attempts by politicians to use the crisis to tout their favored political model, the record so far does not show a strong correlation between efficacy and regime type. While some autocracies have performed well, like Singapore, others have done very poorly, like Iran. Similarly, some democracies have stumbled, like Italy and the United States, while others have performed admirably, like South Korea and Taiwan. The disease has not yet ravaged developing countries, making it impossible to include poorer autocracies and democracies in the comparison.
The Evidence So Far
Three factors appear to have a greater bearing on a country’s success than its type of regime.
Lessons Learned From the SARS Epidemic
Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Singapore differ in their governance systems, but all took away key lessons from SARS: They developed speedy tests soon after the coronavirus began spreading and undertook broad testing to get one step ahead of the virus. All had laws in effect or to invoke during emergencies that allowed extraordinary tracking of where individuals infected with the coronavirus had been, and they relaxed privacy protections to spread that information widely and alert people to be tested. They then relied on heavily enforced quarantines to corral the outbreak. Canada, the one country outside Asia to have a major SARS outbreak, engaged in similar coronavirus preparation and mass testing.
Legitimate Political Systems
When Hong Kong’s chief executive attempted the same strategy as some of Hong Kong’s neighbors, she faced striking nurses and violent opposition to quarantine. What differentiated Hong Kong from other SARS veterans? Its government is distrusted by nearly 60 percent of the population.
The success of governmental social control depends more on voluntary compliance than on government enforcement. In the Cold War era, totalitarian systems were known for their neighborhood spies, gulags, apparatchik bureaucrats, and centralized, highly ideological states where citizens distrusted their government and one another. But today, trust no longer breaks down clearly by government type.
According to surveys by Edelman, China is far and away the country most trusted by its population, Singapore ranks sixth, and South Korea has risen to tenth place under its current leadership. Governments with high levels of trust can effectively maintain onerous lockdowns. Equally important, trust enabled some countries to convince their citizens to allow mass testing and quarantine before the virus’s effects were widely seen, allowing them to stop the spread early.
Conversely, Iran’s government has long been troubled by crises of illegitimacy—one reason why religious leaders in Qom refused to close holy pilgrimage sites and many Iranians ignored warnings to stay home and continued to spread the disease.
But many democracies—dogged by polarization, inequality, and a sense of failed promise—also face low citizen trust. Italians’ trust in their government hovers near that of Hong Kong. Thus, even as police charge tens of thousands of people for breaking lockdown, movement in Lombardy has continued at about 40 percent of normal levels, according to cell phone data. Many European democracies have faced declining trust since the 2008 financial crisis, with Spain, France, and the UK rating particularly low in a Gallup study. In the United States, Pew polling finds that trust in the government has plunged from 75 percent of the population in the 1960s to a near-historic low of 17 percent today. While more people trust government medical advice, Gallup has found that over a third of Italians and nearly 30 percent of Americans don’t. Unsurprisingly, many people in both countries ignored early advice to practice social distancing.
In the United States, polarization affects views of legitimacy. Observance of measures such as handwashing broke down along starkly partisan lines as Trump downplayed the virus and offered advice in conflict with that of medical experts. As state governments—which enjoy greater trust levels—step into the breach, they implement widely differing public health approaches that mirror the red-blue electoral map, turning the United States into fifty case studies in governance.
Another aspect of legitimacy is the extent to which governments play politics with a pandemic to buttress their rule. In typical authoritarian fashion, Iran and China both hid the extent of the crisis from the world and their own publics. China forced an early whistleblowing doctor to recant and refused help from the World Health Organization; Iran grandstanded by sending masks to help Wuhan just a few weeks before it would secretly build mass graves at home. Yet in authoritarian Singapore, the prime minister’s excellent risk communication and transparency have been credited with quickly stopping people from hoarding goods by letting them know what to expect. Meanwhile, the U.S. government politicized the crisis, minimizing its seriousness and under-testing, possibly to avoid numbers that would be politically damaging in an election year.
State Capability
A government’s capacity—its ability to intervene competently in arenas from communication and health provision to quarantine maintenance and equipment manufacturing—is only loosely related to its GDP or overall type of political regime. Some poorer countries have highly educated populations and stronger than average systems of health and enforcement. Authoritarian, lower-middle-income Vietnam, for instance, was able to carry out a similar strategy, with similar success, to that of wealthier, more democratic South Korea.
The United States is underperforming relative to its wealth. The unusual percentage of political appointees in its national civil service means that, at its wealthiest and best-resourced level of government, the response has been hampered by politics and ideology, as well as bureaucratic red tape and rigidity. One consequence is that it can take a week to receive the results of coronavirus diagnostic tests in the United States, while Japan has developed a fifteen-minute test and Singapore can produce test results in three hours. Meanwhile, who gets tested, how fast those tests are processed, and with how much meticulousness contacts are traced and corralled—the crucial steps that allow countries to avoid general lockdown—are all conducted by local health departments. Local resources and education vary widely, and some areas resemble far poorer and less capable countries. In early March, for example, Vietnam was carrying out vastly greater numbers of tests, both per capita and on an absolute basis, than the United States.
Science Requires Responses, Not Ideologies
While it is relatively easy to determine what characteristics make for an effective pandemic response, it’s difficult to determine whether any given strategy is more authoritarian or democratic. For instance, the lax privacy rules that allow South Korea to combine the credit card, CCTV, and GPS tracking data of people who have the virus, and then publicize the results to trace possible contacts, feel Orwellian to those in the West. Yet mass tracing, testing, and quarantine have allowed some countries to avoid the long-term forced lockdowns and military patrols that make democratic Italy, Spain, and France feel as if they are under martial law.
China forced 800,000 people into quarantine, and its use of stadiums as mass isolation areas was chillingly reminiscent of Chilean concentration camps under former president Augusto Pinochet. Yet China has claimed that the people in these temporary hospital facilities were closely monitored and received speedy help, enabling the country to end emergency measures within weeks. Such policies would likely be a relief to many Italians dying in their homes or U.S. businesses facing long-term closure.
The laws of science have a logic that belies ideology. China’s tough measures forcing businesses and schools to close, locking off Hubei Province, and keeping its 50 million citizens homebound was reported by the Washington Post under the headline “China’s coronavirus lockdown—brought to you by authoritarianism.” But then Italy imposed similar rules on 60 million Italians, over 100 million Americans were told to shelter in place, and India called for the largest shutdown in history for its 1.3 billion people. Singapore’s criminal penalties for breaking quarantine and China’s temperature-checking apps and phone-reading drones appeared to capitalize on their high-capacity authoritarianism. But those measures are not dissimilar to South Korea’s digital tracking app, and criminal penalties for breaking quarantine also apply in a multitude of democratic countries, including Italy and the United States.
Authoritarian and democratic governments both have mixed records when it comes to pandemic response. But China’s early start in fighting back the scourge, its economic wherewithal, and its desire to rise globally suggest that it will not let the pandemic go to waste. Authoritarians are certainly in the lead in using the crisis to double down on autocracy in other areas of their governance: witness Russian President Vladimir Putin’s use of the virus to grab more power, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s attempt to rule by decree in Hungary, and China’s denial of food access to Uighur citizens already facing massive repression. If developed democracies cannot pull together to stop the spread of the virus, manufacture the goods the world needs to fight it, and make plans to jumpstart the global economy, China will do so. On the other end of this crisis, the result could be a decisive global shift toward its authoritarian model.
Comments(10)
Wow, fantastic analysis. Ought to be required reading for all elected and appointed senior bureaucrats. That success is a function of people's trust in their government ought to be obvious but ism't. You have demonstrated hands down the importance of this factor. This too bodes ill for future crises. We who are associated woth government need to figure out hos we will rebuild trust before the next great pandemic.
We , in the countries outside the so called Western democracies , discovered that democracy and human right are a load of CRAB .
Good article, but another factor or vector also at play is extent to which a polity is well-defined, united, contained, and relatively small (Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong) vs, very large polities that have historic center-locality disconnects or tensions (Italy, Spain, the U.S., and China). In China's case, despite being an assertively authoritarian, centralized policy, in fact, the relationship between the center and the provinces can have different permutations. In the beginning, in this case, mid-December through mid-January, Hubei province hid data from the center, out of presumed self-interest. Would Hubei's leaders been more responsive to their local population's health and needs if they were elected regionally, not appointed from above, perhaps yes, perhaps not. What remains is that this tension was at play. Would President Trump have evasively avoided responsibility for as long as he did if he was in total charge, rather than in being in the position of sloughing off considerable responsibility to state governors? This center-region vector or factor is independent of ideology or cultural attitudes toward the sanctity of privacy.
I totally agree with your Views: America India EU UK South Africa Brazil and other Democratic Countries have to give confidence and get the medicine immediately in a given time frame: Otherwise Democracy, Human Rights, Debt Trap, Rule of law will go to the new axis of evils including the place or origin of Virus to dictate the world: World democracy is under threat?
Dear Rachel, a very well articulated writing on the topic widely discussed in history and you added the CoVid factor to this contest between democracy and autocracy. It is always a debatable issue scholars allignig with different schools of thought but what strikes me most is your analysis on trust and thier respective counterparts. My perception is that amid CoVid it is only the trust which is working at this moment e.g India declared lock down for 21 days and I can say people respected that and 95 percent is working well despite in India the govt. enjoys only 50 percent mandate but has somehow earned that trust. This trust came from taking the lead at the earliest and preparations well though off. This actually made people feel a bit serious with the effort of government and ensured support. Frankly speaking I never believed that India with 70 percent of people working in unorganised sector whose food depends on daily earning are also showing adherence to the lock down. I don't know if it's the magic of democracy or its the smart and charismatic leadership which is working .... Thank you
Ctrl+f=Sweden. No results. Did not read article.
Thanks, very timely article. I am sure that the analysis of situations with a pandemic will determine a very important aspect of building Agile regulators - the need to consolidate people under certain conditions or areas of life. In the meantime, liberal democratic principles do not exclude permissiveness, respect for a dismissive personal manifestation.
Trust alone could rule the political society. In democracies people repose their faith in government subjected to the periodical review. In the present world pandemic crisis the democratic countries like US, France, Italy,UK,and France are the VICTIMS of negligence/dereliction of constitutional responsibilities on the part of governments. The governments are scared of enforcing lockdown which will curtail sacred freedoms. In this process people lost their precious life for liberties. Had people been voluntarily self quarantined, perhaps devastation should have been prevented. More or less the governments were overconfident in their health systems. Coronavirus proved their mystical belief. On the other hand, the young democracies like India ,South Korea ,Taiwan have rendered yeoman services to their citizens from Covid. The governments convinced them to accept measures taken to protect lives. People also followed the instructions/guidelines as a preventive measure. In this context, these countries are ahead of West which always boast of freedoms. Life is beyond. Coming to dictatorial countries like China, North Korea, /authoritarian regimes like Russia or personal regimes in Africa, the governments do not trust ruled. These regimes ALWAYS enforce military discipline and claim that they confidence/trust of the people. At the same time they don't reveal real no.of casualities. So whatever be political system, every nation strives to minimise the damage on all fronts especially in two spheres-- health as well.economic which are interested. Finally, if any country succeeds , that may become the most favoured Citizens Welfare country. Thanks.
Authoritarianism naturally grants a larger capacity to deal with crises to the governments. That doesn't necessarily mean they will deal with crises better, however. Tyrants will squander that capacity, like Turkmenistan banning the word "Coronavirus" and wearing gloves and masks, or Turkey locking people up for suggesting the virus had reached Turkey in the early days when the government insisted there were no cases. Although both fall under the umbrella of authoritarianism, tyranny and "enlightened despotism", for lack of a better term, are two very different things.
Thank you for breaking down some of the political factors that have contributed to the spread of COVID-19. It is worth noting that equality and justice are concepts that are integral to containment. For instance, while Singapore's initial reactions were lauded what we have come to see in the last few days is a spike in cases, vast majority of which are in foreign worker dormitories. This is in large part due to the institutionalized neglect of these communities.
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