Syropoulos Stylianos, Puschett Elise, Leidner Bernhard
University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Polit Psychol. 2021 Oct;42(5):729-745. doi: 10.1111/pops.12773. Epub 2021 Jul 14.
The COVID-19 pandemic has generated unprecedented human loss and financial difficulties worldwide. In line with recent calls for social sciences to help collective efforts to address COVID-19, we investigated the link between peace and pandemic preparedness, advancing the literatures on negative (i.e., absence of direct violence) and positive peace (i.e., absence of structural violence and presence of equality) and governments' crisis preparedness as well as crisis relief efforts. Two studies tested whether both positive and negative peace predict pandemic preparedness, operationalized as COVID-19 tests, cases, and positivity rates, during the onset of the pandemic. Study 1 did so at the national level across 155 countries; Study 2 did so at a local level, across 3144 counties within the United States. Even after controlling for population size, population density, GDP, and amount of air travel, higher levels of both negative and positive peace predicted a greater number of COVID-19 tests per one million people, fewer overall COVID-19 cases, and a lower positivity rate. These findings point to the possibility that by promoting peace, governments and the international community could potentially become better prepared to handle future pandemics and other crises.
新冠疫情在全球造成了前所未有的人员伤亡和经济困难。为响应近期呼吁社会科学助力应对新冠疫情的集体行动，我们研究了和平与大流行防范之间的联系，拓展了关于消极和平（即没有直接暴力）与积极和平（即没有结构性暴力且存在平等）以及政府危机防范和危机救援努力的文献。两项研究检验了消极和平与积极和平是否都能预测大流行防范情况，在疫情初期，大流行防范情况以新冠病毒检测、病例数和阳性率来衡量。研究1在155个国家的国家层面进行了此项检验；研究2在美国境内3144个县的地方层面进行了检验。即使在控制了人口规模、人口密度、国内生产总值和航空旅行量之后，消极和平与积极和平的更高水平都预示着每百万人口中新冠病毒检测次数更多、新冠病毒总体病例数更少以及阳性率更低。这些发现表明，通过促进和平，政府和国际社会有可能更好地为应对未来的大流行及其他危机做好准备。
