Ideology, political polarisation and agility of policy responses: was weak executive federalism a curse or a blessing for COVID-19 management in the USA?

Abstract

Abstract We investigate whether weak executive federalism was beneficial or damaging for COVID-19 management in the USA. We formulate a policy response model for subnational governments, considering the national government’s preferred policy, in addition to other factors, with incomplete and with complete information. The hypotheses derived are tested using econometric techniques. Our results suggest that ideological and political biases were more influential in a situation of incomplete information than in one of complete information. As such, weak executive federalism allowed more agile policy responses in Democrat-led states when information was incomplete, thus reducing the rates of incidence and mortality. When information was complete, ideological and political biases were found to be of no relevance at all.