Populism and health. An evaluation of the effects of right-wing populism on the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil

What are the effects of right-wing populism in the struggle against COVID-19? We explore data from Brazil, a country whose populist radical right-wing president was among the prominent denialists regarding the effects of the pandemic. Using cross-sectional and weekly-panel data for 5,570 municipalit...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2022-12, Vol.17 (12), p.e0269349-e0269349
Main Authors: Fernandes, Gustavo Andrey de Almeida Lopes, de Almeida Lopes Fernandes, Ivan Filipe
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Brazil - epidemiology
Conspiracy
Control
Coronaviruses
COVID-19
COVID-19 - epidemiology
Cross-Sectional Studies
Disease
Disease control
Election results
Elections
Epidemics
Globalization
Health aspects
Humans
Ideology
Medicine and Health Sciences
Municipalities
Pandemics
Panel data
Partisanship
People and places
Political campaigns
Political leadership
Politics
Populism
Presidential elections
Radicalism
Severe acute respiratory syndrome
Social aspects
Social distancing
Social isolation
Social Sciences
Trump, Donald J
Viral diseases
Voter behavior
Voting
Xenophobia
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Summary:What are the effects of right-wing populism in the struggle against COVID-19? We explore data from Brazil, a country whose populist radical right-wing president was among the prominent denialists regarding the effects of the pandemic. Using cross-sectional and weekly-panel data for 5,570 municipalities during 2020, we present evidence that social distancing was weakened, and the number of cases and deaths were higher in places where the president had received greater electoral support during the 2018 presidential elections. Placebo tests using traditional right-wing vote and data on Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) before the pandemic outbreak indicate that the former does not correlate with health outcomes, and the populist share of the vote does not correlate with the latter. Hence, we find strong indications that right-wing populism relates to a poor response to the disease.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0269349