ABSTRACT

We analyze the first wave of COVID-19 fatalities in Spain at the subnational level to identify why some Autonomous Communities (ACs) were more successful at minimizing mortality levels. Our work adds to emerging literature on policy implications of pandemics and the role of governments in containing crises. Additionally, because national responses to crises are not homogeneous, we develop empirical measures of subnational political capacity. We investigate the relative capacity of governments in mobilizing the population to follow national health policy recommendations and extracting resources to implement those policies. Furthermore, we examine the effects of political alignment between the subnational and central governments in determining the country’s success containing the outbreak. Through a random-effects panel regression and a generalized additive model, we find that wealth and demography account for half of the variance in COVID-19 deaths across ACs, while including political capacity and alignment increases the variance explained above 70%.

摘要

我们分析了西班牙在次国家层面的第一波 COVID-19 死亡事件，以确定为什么一些自治社区 (AC) 在最大限度地降低死亡率方面更为成功。我们的工作增加了关于流行病的政策影响和政府在遏制危机中的作用的新兴文献。此外，由于国家对危机的反应不是同质的，我们开发了地方政治能力的实证测量。我们调查了政府在动员民众遵循国家卫生政策建议和提取资源以实施这些政策方面的相对能力。此外，我们还研究了地方政府和中央政府之间的政治结盟在决定国家成功遏制疫情方面的影响。