The hopeful time when we may begin to talk of the pandemic in the past tense may be nigh. While most of the world has already begun living a new normal, China’s “zero-covid” strategy suggests that the debate on the most effective covid policies may not yet come to an end. Two years on, we may finally start to understand just how useful lockdowns were and what really matters when it comes to generating support for policies aimed at curbing the spread of the virus. These lessons will be useful not just for the next pandemic but also for the next crisis in waiting. The heart of the issue after all, concerns balancing the interests of the individual with that of the collective.

People of most countries saw their freedoms being curbed to a small or great degree. This intensified the debate on the state of democracy in many countries in an era which had begun to see the rise of strongmen much before the pandemic took root. American citizens took to the streets over mask mandates, French ones over the ‘passe-santitaire’ a year later, while Swedish citizens avoided any kind of hard lockdown whatsoever. On the other hand, China claims its covid strategy has been more effective than the West’s, despite the seeming weariness of residents being sealed off due to local outbreaks. What is more, it has been unwilling to change it even as its citizens have been vaccinated. Despite these claims, there is unlikely to be a one-size-fits-all solution to an outbreak. Nor is a particular political system necessarily superior to others in fighting a global catastrophe such as the one we witnessed. But it is still possible to say something about the socio-political culture of countries that makes them particularly vulnerable.

While anecdotal comparisons of countries are less than useful, there is now enough data to tell us how different political systems, performed, on average. Using 2019 democracy scores from the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) and a country-level database of covid-19 deaths up to November 2021 with each country’s social and political characteristics compiled by the Berlin Social Sciences Center, a research institute, a surprising relationship appears. Results shows that democracies and authoritarian regimes performed similarly in terms of weekly deaths. However, flawed democracies and hybrid regimes, reported, on average 68 percent and 36 per cent higher weekly deaths respectively, compared to authoritarian regimes. In short, there seems to exist an inverse U-shaped relationship between democracy scores and weekly covid deaths (see first chart). When moving from authoritarian regimes to full democracies, average weekly deaths first increase and then fall. This estimation takes into account a number of country characteristics, including population density as well as health data quality. Testing this theory with an alternate democracy score from V-Dem leads to similar results. Using the pre-pandemic score is crucial because the state of democracy has itself been impacted as a result of the pandemic.

To investigate the reasons behind this relationship, it is helpful to breakdown EIU’s democracy score into its stipulated individual measures, of which there are five: electoral process and pluralism, functioning of government, political participation, democratic political culture and civil liberties. Out of these five dimensions two exert the most influence on weekly deaths- democratic political culture and civil liberties. But they work in opposing directions.

While a more democratic political culture is associated with fewer deaths, more civil liberties are associated with higher weekly deaths (see charts on the left). Democratic political culture measures support for democratic values in general and not for the particular government currently in power. This suggests that it is not democracy alone, but a society that values democracy that has been crucially related to fewer deaths. A populace that believes in its institutions and government is likelier to follow stay-at-home orders and other restrictions imposed by the government. On the other hand, curtailing civil liberties in the form of lockdowns as well as limiting gatherings formed the backbone of initial measures to ‘flatten the curve’ in most countries and was imperative to contain the spread of the virus, even in democratic countries. It is less surprising, then, that societies that had fewer liberties to begin with, had an easier time transitioning into lockdowns and following orders. Authoritarian regimes also have the power to unilaterally pass orders which could save precious time in a pandemic and also ensure that a popular backlash can mostly be avoided.

Democracies should learn from this. It can be reasonably extrapolated that maintaining trust in and support of democracy is in no small part the responsibility of the government and politicians, including opposition leaders. It can be tempting to target the ruling government for its flawed responses and a vibrant democracy should forever aspire to hold its government accountable, but even leaders of the opposition have a responsibility to do so while harboring respect for the institutions of democracy, rather than by sowing distrust. Sooner or later, another crisis would emerge and should it strike a more distrustful citizenry, there will be limits to even the best-meaning interventions, no matter who is in power.