Who's in Charge? Understanding Rallying and Accountability in the COVID-19 Pandemic

Ignacio Lago and Santiago Lago-Peñas

No WP2612, IDEAGOV Working Papers from IDEAGOV - International Center for Decentralization and Governance

Abstract: This study explores how the COVID-19 pandemic influenced the rally and accountability effects on incumbent parties at both the national and regional levels. We argue that these effects depend on who is responsible for health policy in each country. Using a measure of static party nationalization, we analyze 988 lower house elections across 105 countries from 1960 to 2020, and predict nationalization scores for elections held after March 11, 2020. Our analysis of 35 elections in 30 countries during the pandemic reveals that the impact was more national than regional, driven by the number of casualties rather than the stringency of containment measures. The rally effect was observed only in unitary states, where the national government had full responsibility for managing the pandemic. In federal and confederal countries, where regional governments are also responsible for public health policies, no clear impact on nationalization scores was observed.

Keywords: Accountability; COVID-19 pandemic; decentralization; elections; rally (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H70 H77 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 30 pages
Date: 2026-06-16
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://repec.ideagov.eu/RePEc/ida/wpaper/WP2612.pdf First version, 2026 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ida:wpaper:wp2612

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IDEAGOV Working Papers from IDEAGOV - International Center for Decentralization and Governance Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by IDEAGOV - International Center for Decentralization and Governance ().