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ABSTRACT
The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic raises concerns about the capability of governments to develop policies addressing its effects. This article evaluates citizens’ attitudes about their governments’ early responses to the crisis in three post-Soviet countries (Estonia, Georgia, and Ukraine). We explore how the pandemic emerged, focusing on connections among state capacity, government policy interventions, and crisis mitigation. We also use data from the Perceptions and Attitudes on COVID-19 in Eurasia (PACE) survey to evaluate how individual-level attitudes and characteristics are associated with evaluations of government responsiveness. We find that trust in state institutions affects reported satisfaction with crisis responses.
Acknowledgments
The authors thank the Minerva Research Initiative, the Office of Naval Research, the Woolwine Family Faculty Travel Fund, and West Virginia University for research support. We also thank Marlene Laruelle and her colleagues for facilitating the PONARS Eurasia Pandemic Workshop and Mikhail Alexseev for his advice. Timely research assistance from Theodore Fehr, Nick Larson and Elizabeta Shifrin at UIUC, and Ani Tepnadze and Paige Wantlin at WVU, is much appreciated. The opinions expressed here are solely those of the authors.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
4. One notable poor performer in the Baltic region, Sweden, stands out in its efforts to develop “herd immunity” by failing to limit behaviors that spread the virus (Pierre Citation2020).
6. https://www.kriis.ee/en/news/government-declared-emergency-situation-estonia-until-1-may. The list of countries with travel restrictions is updated at least once every two weeks.
10. https://news.err.ee/1071308/family-doctors-association-investigates-low-coronavirus-figures-in-narva.
11. https://www.kriis.ee/en/news/special-notice-government-has-extended-emergency-situation- estonia-until-may-17.
14. https://www.kriis.ee/en/news/covid-19-crisis-exit-strategy-plan-was-published-government-committee.
23. This status was in place as of August 8, 2020 (https://reopen.europa.eu/en).
24. For example, the Cabinet of Ministers enacted a resolution on February 19, 2020, to procure necessary equipment. https://www.kmu.gov.ua/npas/deyaki-pitannya-zakupivli-medichnih-virobiv-dlya-zapobigannya-zanesennyu-i-poshirennyu-na-t190220.
27. https://www.kmu.gov.ua/npas/pro-vnesennya-zmin-do-postanovi-kabinetu-ministriv-ukrayini-vid-20-travnya-2020-t030620 and https://www.kmu.gov.ua/storage/app/uploads/public/5ed/7b7/288/5ed7b72888874950142540.doc.
30. https://www.europeansocialsurvey.org Estonia Round 9, Version 2. Data were analyzed using post stratification weights.
31. https://caucasusbarometer.org/en/datasets/Georgia2019. Data were analyzed by randomly selecting one respondent per household and employing the household weights.
32. https://www.iri.org/sites/default/files/july_2019_ukraine_poll.pdf July 2019. In ranking the leading national problem, 44% of respondents selected corruption in the government.
33. https://www.kiis.com.ua/?lang=eng&cat=reports&t=7 48% of the sample selected corruption within government structures as the most pressing national problem.
36. These responses are equivalent to a 5 (very good) or 4 (good) on the Likert Scale.
37. We include responses for the president, parliament, the cabinet of ministers (in Estonia, prime minister and cabinet) and health ministries (Estonian Ministry of Social Affairs, Georgian Ministry of Health and Labor, and Ukrainian Ministry of Health).
38. The Online Appendix is available at: http://bit.ly/3lnNgm6.
39. We omit the coefficients from age, gender, education, urban residency, ethnicity, and economic status from our visualization to ease the interpretation, but include them in Tables A1 and A2 in the Online Appendix. In general, these variables do not exert a consistent effect on the results and are further discussed in the Online Appendix.