The COVID-19 pandemic has brought forward myriad challenges to public policy, central of which is understanding the different contextual factors that can influence the effectiveness of policy responses across different systems. In this article, we explore how trust in government can influence the ability of COVID-19 policy responses to curb excess mortality during the pandemic. Our findings indicate that stringent policy responses play a central role in curbing excess mortality. They also indicate that such relationship is not only influenced by systematic and structural factors, but also by citizens’ trust in government. We leverage our findings to propose a set of recommendations for policymakers on how to enhance crisis policymaking and strengthen the designs of the widely used underlying policy learning processes.

COVID-19 大流行给公共政策带来了无数挑战，其中核心是了解可能影响跨不同系统的政策反应有效性的不同背景因素。在本文中，我们探讨了对政府的信任如何影响 COVID-19 政策应对在大流行期间抑制过高死亡率的能力。我们的研究结果表明，严格的政策应对在遏制超额死亡率方面发挥着核心作用。他们还指出，这种关系不仅受到系统性和结构性因素的影响，还受到公民对政府的信任的影响。我们利用我们的研究结果，就如何加强危机决策和加强广泛使用的基础政策学习过程的设计为政策制定者提出了一系列建议。