The Politics of Pandemics: The Effect of Stay-At-Home Orders on COVID-19 Mitigation
The Politics of Pandemics: The Effect of Stay-At-Home Orders on COVID-19 Mitigation
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DOI：
10.1017/spq.2021.14
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发表时间：
2022-03-01
影响因子：
1.5
通讯作者：
Patterson, Shawn, Jr.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Patterson, Shawn, Jr.
COVID-19疫情颠覆了美国人生活的方方面面。州政府迅速做出反应，保护公众健康，稳定不堪重负的医院系统。最具限制性的政策是“呆在家里的命令”，公共卫生官员认为这是成功的国家减灾战略的基石。但与当代政治的许多方面一样，对这些努力的支持带有明显的党派色彩。在本文中，我认为政党政治严重影响了国家对COVID-19的政策反应，这反过来又限制了缓解措施。在这一点上，我首先证明，民主党州长更快，更有可能采取留在家里的命令比共和党。接下来，使用合成控制方法，我表明，这些命令导致居民练习更大的社会距离。最后，我发现更大的社交距离通过限制COVID-19病例的增长而起到了“拉平曲线”的作用。这些发现共同显示了政党政治如何影响国家的流行病应对措施，并在国家开始解除限制时具有重要的长期影响。
The COVID-19 pandemic has upended every aspect of American life. State governments responded quickly to protect public health and stabilize overwhelmed hospital systems. The most restrictive policy, the stay-at-home order, was seen by public health officials as a cornerstone of successful state mitigation strategies. But like many aspects of contemporary politics, support for these efforts took on a distinctly partisan hue. In this paper, I argue that party politics significantly affected state policy responses to COVID-19, which in turn limited mitigation efforts. To this point, I first demonstrate that Democratic governors were faster and more likely to adopt stay-at-home orders than Republicans. Next, using a synthetic control approach, I show that these orders caused residents to practice greater social distancing. Finally, I find that greater social distancing worked to "flattened the curve" by limiting the growth of COVID-19 cases. Together these findings show how party politics affected state pandemic responses and have important long-term implications as states begin lifting restrictions.