Social distancing in risk society: a cross-national analysis of policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic

ABSTRACT

Countries that implement strict policy measures to combat coronavirus contagion increase their probability of achieving successful social distancing practice when compared to the countries without such strict policies. I used Regression Discontinuity Design (RDD) as a quasi-experimental evaluation option to perform regression models and show differences in social distancing efforts. I utilized 3,997 observations for 132 countries, drawn from the Oxford CGRT Stringency Index and Google Community Mobility data. The results show that people’s community mobility to various locations has flattened significantly as policy measures become stricter. In this paper, I considered current underlying health situation to be symptomatic of a risk society and argued that policy interventions’ effectiveness in response to COVID-19 depends on political leaders, public health authorities, and institutions’ credibility. Political rhetoric, politically motivated scientific solutions, and political downplaying of the underlying health implications weaken the responsible organizations and institutions, particularly when leaders undermine inclusive stringent policies and their implementation.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19
• social distancing
• policy responses
• cross national analysis
• regression discontinuity design

Acknowledgements

I acknowledge insightful comments and suggestions received from Sumena Sultana (Ph.D. Candidate, School of Social Sciences, Universiti Sains Malaysia) and Mufti Nadimul Quamar Ahmed (Lecturer, Department of Applied Sociology & Social Work, North East University Bangladesh).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Countries included in this study are: Afghanistan, Angola, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belgium, Belize, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Brazil, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Guatemala, Honduras, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Iraq, Ireland, Kuwait, Kyrgyz Republic, Laos, Lebanon, Libya, Malaysia, Mali, Mauritius, Mexico, Mozambique, Myanmar, Namibia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Qatar, Romania, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Tanzania, Thailand, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkey, Uganda, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States, Uruguay, Venezuela, Vietnam, Zambia, Zimbabwe.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

A H M Belayeth Hussain

Dr. A H M Belayeth Hussain is Research Associate-II at JBS International, Inc. Before joining JBS, he worked in the School of Social Sciences at Universiti Sains Malaysia and the Sociology department at Shahjalal University of Science and Technology (Bangladesh). Dr. Hussain’s research interest overlaps social policy, labor sociology, and economic sociology, focusing mainly on computational social sciences. Currently, he is working on various program evaluations using quasi-experimental and mixed-method designs.