Emergency Powers in Response to COVID-19: Policy diffusion, Democracy, and Preparedness

TL;DR

This study analyzes how countries' decisions to declare COVID-19 emergency powers are influenced by regional, democratic, and preparedness factors, revealing that democracies with poor preparedness were more likely to declare SOEs proactively.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive cross-national analysis of factors influencing COVID-19 emergency declarations, highlighting the roles of regional environment, democracy, and preparedness.

Findings

Permissive regional environments reduce political costs of SOEs.

Weak democracies with poor preparedness are more likely to declare SOEs.

Many states declared SOEs proactively, before local COVID-19 impact.

Abstract

We examine COVID-19-related states of emergency (SOEs) using data on 180 countries in the period January 1 through June 12, 2020. The results suggest that states' declaration of SOEs is driven by both external and internal factors. A permissive regional environment, characterized by many and simultaneously declared SOEs, may have diminished reputational and political costs, making employment of emergency powers more palatable for a wider range of governments. At the same time, internal characteristics, specifically democratic institutions and pandemic preparedness, shaped governments' decisions. Weak democracies with poor pandemic preparedness were considerably more likely to opt for SOEs than dictatorships and robust democracies with higher preparedness. We find no significant association between pandemic impact, measured as national COVID-19-related deaths, and SOEs, suggesting that many states adopted SOEs proactively before the disease spread locally.