Honors Theses
Date of Award
Spring 4-8-2021
Document Type
Undergraduate Thesis
Department
Political Science
First Advisor
Lauren Ferry
Second Advisor
Timothy Nordstrom
Third Advisor
Robert Brown
Relational Format
Dissertation/Thesis
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 has challenged what we know about the politics of public health. In this research study, I investigate the COVID-19 pandemic as a natural disaster and hypothesize if authoritarian governments are more adequate at disaster control and relief. I hypothesize that the more autocratic a government structure, the better they would be at handling COVID-19 exposure and outbreaks due to their centralized decision making, unified media, and their ability to make unpopular decisions without repercussions. In order to test this theory, I gather data from the Johns Hopkins database for three key dates in the pandemic time frame. With this data, I created three regression analyses using the statistical software, R. My analyses show that there was surprisingly no correlation between government structure and COVID exposure. In my conclusions, I find that the government structure has no significant impact on how countries handled the COVID-19 pandemic
Recommended Citation
Kay, Jane, "Do Autocratic Regimes Excel in Natural Disaster Relief? A Case Study of Political Institutions and Covid-19 Exposure" (2021). Honors Theses. 1911.
https://egrove.olemiss.edu/hon_thesis/1911
Accessibility Status
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Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.