political development-COVID-19

However, it is unclear whether and how states could maximize the effectiveness of containment policy measures and which capabilities at the governance level are required. A concise review of the data about the political variables and political development measures on the morbidity and mortality of COVID-19-related diseases shows that there is not a certain relationship between them. Some aspects of the diverse, nonlinear relationships between political development and COVID-19 are illustrated these data which indicate the ambivalent nature of relationships between political development measures and cumulative confirmed COVID-19 cases per million people in different countries.

These graphs compare the morbidity of COVID-19 (World Health Organization 2020; our world in data) with the level of political rights (“Freedom in the World Data” 2020), open government and civil justice (“The World Justice Project (WJP) Rule of Law Index” 2020) in some developed and developing countries. Interestingly, they do not show a linear relationship between political development measures and the morbidity of COVID-19.

These data thus point to unclear relationships between political development measures and the responses to the pandemic in different countries, and to the sometimes-contradictory effects of responses implemented to date by different governments. Of particular note are the differences between Norway, New Zealand, Sweden, Taiwan, the Republic of Korea and Japan, on one hand, and Spain, France, the USA, Italy and even Sweden, Belgium, the Netherlands and Switzerland on the other hand.

It may be hypothesized that particular features of state processes and practices account for the different results.