Resumo

The Covid-19 pandemic has been challenging governments and their public policies in virtually every country worldwide (Ren, 2020). The various studies that have appeared have supported an explicit multi-causal nature of the pandemic and its relationships with different contexts, showing that the phenomenon goes far beyond medical and biological issues. Other studies analyzed the impact of political regimes, especially democracy and authoritarianism, in combating the Covid-19 pandemic.

The present research focused on how democratic states dealt with Covid-19, seeking to understand how the differences between these democracies affected the containment of infections and deaths caused by the coronavirus. While we recognize that the direction of the relationship between democracy and the Covid-19 pandemic fight goes both ways, in this article, we focus on how democratic states affected the Covid-19 outcomes. This work starts from the hypothesis that the relationship between democracy and the results of Covid-19 is more complex than a direct relationship.

Inequality has played an essential role in Covid-19’s containment capacity in different countries. Factors such as GDP per capita, urbanization, and life expectancy, whose impacts can be seen in the effects of the pandemic, are related to internal (difference between socio-economic classes within a country) and external inequality (differences from one country to another). From an international point of view, developed countries had more access to tests, treatments, and vaccines. Post-colonial countries, the state’s capacity to respond to the pandemic is limited (Seekings & Nattrass, 2020).

Our arguments that the relationship between democracy and Covid-19 results depends on different country contexts. It shows both the direct relationship that democracy can have with Covid-19 results and the relationship dependent on democracy with urbanization, life expectancy, inequalities, and the Covid-19 effects. The dataset comprises 150 countries based on the availability of data on Covid-19 from the Tracker of the University of John Hopkins.

The results show a relevant interaction effect between democracy and the level of urbanization, and the Covid-19 outcomes measured as Covid-19 confirmed infections, total deaths, and deaths per 100’000 habitants. Life expectancy is statistically significant when it comes to case fatality. The regressions show that the democracy and Covid-19 outcomes in terms of Covid-19 infections and Covid-19 deaths per 100’000 habitants are moderated by access to basic public services such as security, primary education, and clean water and healthcare.

General arguments that try to establish a correlation or even a relationship between democracy and Covid-19 outcomes are misleading. We believe that the claimed relationship depends on the estimation model, which kind of interaction variables in terms of the country context is utilized, and how Covid-19 outcomes are operationalized. Moreover, inequality plays an additional important role when it comes to assessing the Covid-19 outcomes.

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