We analysed all recorded epidemics since 1960 and found democracies handle epidemic diseases better than their non-democratic counterparts
“ONLY IN China and only under the leadership of President Xi can there be such effective measures to put this sudden and fast-spreading epidemic under control.” So claims Wang Yi, China’s foreign minister, when describing China’s extraordinary mobilisation to combat the new coronavirus—from the ultra-fast construction of new hospitals to the mass lockdown of Chinese cities.
China likes to point out that, when the H1N1 flu virus was first identified in America in 2009 , the country proved unable to stop a global pandemic that killed perhaps 284,000 people. Yet for all the chest-beating about the virtues of Chinese socialism, an analysis byfinds that democracies—defined here as countries with free and fair elections—tend to be better than other forms of government at containing and treating outbreaks of disease. This holds true for rich and poor countries alike.
The difference between democracies and non-democracies is statistically highly significant. The relationship also appears to be robust: it holds when considering only large epidemics , or only epidemics affecting populations in the same geographical region. It also holds when controlling for the year or decade in which the epidemics occurred.
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