Autocratic regimes imposed stricter lockdowns, but could not reduce public movement as much as democracies did, a study suggests China’s success in containing covid-19 has given traction to the idea that autocratic regimes may be able to handle such pandemics better.
But a new study in VoxEU suggests that while such regimes have indeed imposed stricter lockdowns, they have been less effective in reducing public movement.
Researchers from Oxford used the university’s covid-19 government response tracker to measure the strictness of lockdown policies in various countries.
To estimate adherence, they used Google’s covid-19 mobility reports. The latest democracy index of Freedom House was used to classify regimes.