COVID-19 and erosion of democracy

The main research question of this study is about the drivers of democracy backsliding during the COVID-19 pandemic, with a special focus on the rule of law and the state of democracy just before the shock. There is growing interest in the political implications of the coronavirus pandemic, debating mostly the misuse of emergencies and violations of various norms by governments; however the links between the current democracy erosion with institutional environment remain unclear. We use a novel global dataset covering the period of the first two waves of the pandemic (January–December 2020), and apply various econometric and machine learning tools to identify institutional, economic and social factors influencing democracy. Our results are of scientific and practical importance and imply that the stronger the rule of law and the higher the level of democracy, the lower the risk of democracy backsliding in the face of the pandemic.