https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6533-3645
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Abstract
There is significant cross-country variation in COVID-19 fatalities worldwide. In this study, we analyze the relationship between political trust and fatalities from the COVID-1s9 pandemic. By performing a cross-country analysis and controlling for other determinants, we find that government trust is negatively associated with the excess mortality rate during the pandemic.
Acknowledgments
We appreciate the helpful comments and suggestions of Markus Hadler (Editor), two anonymous reviewers, Sven Fischer and Jhoana Ocampo.
Data availability statement
The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on request.
Notes
1 One recent notable study is Robinson et al. (Citation2021) which focuses on the role of confidence in government and support for relevant self-protective actions and policies during the COVID-19 pandemic in the case of the United States. The authors use a nationwide survey of U.S. adults. Their descriptive and bivariate analyses show that trust is a critical factor in reducing the human costs of COVID-19 “as it is related to the intention to adopt personal protective actions and support for key public policies.”
2 This is based on data from World Value Survey, Wave 7, 2017–2020 and is the share of respondents who replied: a great deal of confidence or quite a lot of confidence in the government.
3 The data can be accessed under the following link: https://github.com/dkobak/excess-mortality/blob/main/excess-mortality.csv
4 A few recent studies have also investigated the role of populism in COVID-19 pandemic. For examples, see the studies of Bayerlein et al. (2021) and Cepaluni, Dorsch, and Dzebo (Citation2021a).
5 Interquartile range (IQR) = Q3 − Q1. The IQR for the significant independent variables in Table 2 slightly differs from the shown IQR in Table 1 due to a smaller amount of observations.