Populism and COVID-19

There is a burgeoning literature about populist leaders and health outcomes. The worldwide Covid-19 pandemic presents a unique natural experiment to study whether populist forces handle the crisis better or worse than their non-populist counterparts. In this paper we propose three theoretical reasons why we expect populists to mishandle the pandemic. First, many populist leaders promote chauvinistic welfare policies, which might result in the underprovision of public goods, including overall healthcare spending cuts. Second, many populist leaders downplay the significance of the pandemic due to their denial of science-based evidence. Third, populist forces exacerbate (if not start) political polarization, which increases the overall level of hostility among the population and decreases sympathy to the sick, especially if they belong to the opposition political camp. We also hypothesize that certain political institutions, such as liberal democracy and federalism, might mitigate the nefarious effect of populists on the pandemic. To test our hypotheses, we make use of data from the novel V-Party dataset and COVID-19 Protective Policy Index (PPI) project.