In trust we trust: The impact of trust in government on excess mortality during the COVID-19 pandemic

Bishoy Louis Zaki; Francesco Nicoli; Ellen Wayenberg; Bram Verschuere

doi:10.1177/09520767211058003

In trust we trust: The impact of trust in government on excess mortality during the COVID-19 pandemic

Public Policy Adm. 2022 Apr;37(2):226-252. doi: 10.1177/09520767211058003.

Authors

Bishoy Louis Zaki¹, Francesco Nicoli², Ellen Wayenberg¹, Bram Verschuere¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Public Governance and Management, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, University of Ghent, Belgium.
² Department of Public Governance and Management, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, University of Ghent, Belgium Department of Economics, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought forward myriad challenges to public policy, central of which is understanding the different contextual factors that can influence the effectiveness of policy responses across different systems. In this article, we explore how trust in government can influence the ability of COVID-19 policy responses to curb excess mortality during the pandemic. Our findings indicate that stringent policy responses play a central role in curbing excess mortality. They also indicate that such relationship is not only influenced by systematic and structural factors, but also by citizens' trust in government. We leverage our findings to propose a set of recommendations for policymakers on how to enhance crisis policymaking and strengthen the designs of the widely used underlying policy learning processes.

Keywords: COVID-19; comparative public policy; crisis response; policy learning; trust.