State-level Citizen Response to COVID-19 Containment Measures in Brazil and Mexico

Creator

Abstract

In Brazil and Mexico, presidents failed to take swift, national action to stop the spread of COVID-19. Instead, the burden of imposing and enforcing public health measures has largely fallen to subnational leaders, resulting in varied approaches within each country and conflicting messaging from elites. We likewise see variation in compliance with social distancing across subnational units. To explain this variation, we contend that citizen responses are driven both by the comprehensiveness of state policies and whether they take cues from national or subnational elites. We hypothesize that support for national and subnational elites, and the nature of the state-level policy response, affect citizen compliance with public health guidelines. In both countries, we find that support for the governor has an interactive relationship with policy response. In Brazil, support for the president is associated with lower compliance. In Mexico, this effect is not present. We argue that these distinct relationships are due to the different cues emerging from each leader.

Date of publication

Keyword

DOI

Identifier

Resource type

Rights statement

Rights holder

SAGE Publications Ltd, or GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies, unless otherwise noted. Manuscript content on this site is licensed under Creative Commons Licenses

License

Journal title

Journal volume

Journal issue

Page start

Page end

ISSN

Copyright date

Publisher

Relations

Parents:

This work has no parents.

In Collection:

Thumbnail	Title	Date Uploaded	Visibility	Actions
	10.1177_1866802X211057135.pdf	2022-02-02	Public	Download