Charron Nicholas, Lapuente Victor, Rodríguez-Pose Andrés
The Department of Political Science and Quality of Government Institute University of Gothenburg Sweden.
ESADE Business School Spain.
Eur J Polit Res. 2022 Apr 19. doi: 10.1111/1475-6765.12529.
Why have some territories performed better than others in the fight against COVID-19? This paper uses a novel dataset on excess mortality, trust and political polarization for 165 European regions to explore the role of social and political divisions in the remarkable regional differences in excess mortality during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. First, we investigate whether regions characterized by a low social and political trust witnessed a higher excess mortality. Second, we argue that it is not only levels, but also polarization in trust among citizens - in particular, between government supporters and non-supporters - that matters for understanding why people in some regions have adopted more pro-healthy behaviour. Third, we explore the partisan make-up of regional parliaments and the relationship between political division - or what we refer to as 'uncooperative politics'. We hypothesize that the ideological positioning - in particular those that lean more populist - and ideological polarization among political parties is also linked to higher mortality. Accounting for a host of potential confounders, we find robust support that regions with lower levels of both social and political trust are associated with higher excess mortality, along with citizen polarization in institutional trust in some models. On the ideological make-up of regional parliaments, we find that, ceteris paribus, those that lean more 'tan' on the 'GAL-TAN' spectrum yielded higher excess mortality. Moreover, although we find limited evidence of elite polarization driving excess deaths on the left-right or GAL-TAN spectrums, partisan differences on the attitudes towards the European Union demonstrated significantly higher deaths, which we argue proxies for (anti)populism. Overall, we find that both lower citizen-level trust and populist elite-level ideological characteristics of regional parliaments are associated with higher excess mortality in European regions during the first wave of the pandemic.
为什么有些地区在抗击新冠疫情方面比其他地区表现更好？本文使用了一个关于165个欧洲地区超额死亡率、信任和政治两极分化的全新数据集，以探究社会和政治分歧在新冠疫情第一波期间超额死亡率显著的地区差异中所起的作用。首先，我们调查社会和政治信任度较低的地区是否见证了更高的超额死亡率。其次，我们认为，不仅信任水平，而且公民之间的信任两极分化——特别是政府支持者和非支持者之间的信任两极分化——对于理解为什么某些地区的人们采取了更有利于健康的行为至关重要。第三，我们探讨地区议会的党派构成以及政治分歧——或者我们所说的“不合作政治”——之间的关系。我们假设政党之间的意识形态定位——特别是那些更倾向于民粹主义的定位——以及意识形态两极分化也与更高的死亡率有关。在考虑了一系列潜在的混杂因素后，我们发现有力的证据表明，社会和政治信任水平较低的地区与更高的超额死亡率相关，在某些模型中还与公民在机构信任方面的两极分化相关。关于地区议会的意识形态构成，我们发现，在其他条件相同的情况下，那些在“GAL-TAN”光谱上更倾向于“tan”的地区产生了更高的超额死亡率。此外，虽然我们发现精英两极分化在左右或“GAL-TAN”光谱上导致超额死亡的证据有限，但政党在对欧盟态度上的差异显示出显著更高的死亡率，我们认为这是（反）民粹主义的代理指标。总体而言，我们发现，在疫情第一波期间，欧洲地区公民层面较低的信任以及地区议会民粹主义精英层面的意识形态特征都与更高的超额死亡率相关。
