Local Political Institutions and First-Mover Policy Responses to COVID-19

Mirya R. Holman, Emily M. Farris and Jane Lawrence Sumner

Journal of Political Institutions and Political Economy, 2020, vol. 1, issue 4, 523-541

Abstract: In the United States, the federal government's slow response to the COVID-19 pandemic and localized instances of outbreaks devolved initial policy responses to state and local governments. But not all local governments reacted in equal measure. Was a delayed response in cities due simply to timing of infections, or did politics and political institutions play a role? We use crowd-sourced data to assess local governments' policy responses to the pandemic amidst escalating cases and a scattershot approach to policymaking. Combining a unique dataset of the presence of local shelter-in-place, business closure, and gathering size policies with data on local COVID cases, ideology, partisanship, and institutional capacity, we find that evidence that federalism, demand, and ideology influence local governments' COVID-19 policy responses.

Keywords: COVID; local governments; policy response; partisanship; fiscal capacity; federalism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:now:jnlpip:113.00000020

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