The Management of the Pandemic and its Effects on Trust and Accountability

About this event

The management of the COVID-19 pandemic represented one of the greatest challenges that policymakers had to face in recent history. The rapidly changing reality and directives may have contributed to a popular perception of erratic management of governments in many countries. In this paper, we investigate how people process information regarding the quality of the management of the pandemic in their region. We conduct an online experiment to 5,000 respondents in Spain in November 2020. A randomly selected treated group obtained information on the number of contact tracers in their region, a key policy to manage the pandemic. We find that individuals greatly over-estimate the number of contact tracers in their region. When provided the actual number of contact tracers, individuals experience a significant reduction in trust in governments and other political institutions. We also find a reduction on individuals' willingness to comply with government's recommendation of getting vaccinated. Finally, we also find evidence that individuals ideological leanings affect how they process the negative news regarding the number of contact tracers. Those politically aligned to their regional government are more likely to shift blame to the central government for the deficient number of contact tracers. They are also less likely to reduce their electoral support for the regional incumbent. These findings illustrates the difficulties in the exercise of political accountability when political preferences are polarized and when areas of responsibility are not well established.