Objective: This paper quantitatively explores determinants of governments’ non-pharmaceutical policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. Our focus is on the extent to which geographic mobility affected the stringency of governmental policy responses.Methods: Using cross-country, daily frequency data on geographic mobility and COVID-19 policy stringency during 2020, we investigate some of the determinants of policy responses to COVID-19. In order to causally identify the effect of geographic mobility on policy stringency, we pursue an instrumental variable strategy that exploits climate data to identify arguably exogenous variation in geographic mobility.Results: We find that societies that are more geographically mobile have governmental policy responses that are less stringent. Examining disaggregated mobility data, we show that the negative relation between geographic mobility and policy stringency is the stronger for commercially-oriented movements than for geographic movements that relate to civil society.Conclusion: The results suggest that policy-makers are more willing to trade-off public health for economic concerns relative to other civil concerns.
The far-right has been widely studied in the last decades, but little attention has been paid to its local activities. Nonetheless, in countries without far-right national government records, like Hungary, this might be the only way to explore the aims and characteristics of the former parties. This study sets out to explore the activities and main policy initiatives of local far-right leadership in Hungary that are driven by ideological scapegoating mechanisms. The research this paper is based on employed qualitative techniques -in-depth interviews and content analysis of local sources -to grasp the patterns of the local governance of Jobbik. The main foci of the fieldwork-based research are the manifestations of enemy images and ideological scapegoating in the field of symbolic politics, Roma -non-Roma cohabitation, social policy, the public work scheme and public safety -fields where (Jobbik) mayors have substantial room for maneuver, and also areas to which the party's ideological predisposition and scapegoating can be traced back. The paper also examines how local enemy images relate to national ones and to the political strategy of Jobbik during a period when the party underwent important changes such as moderation and de-radicalization, having lost their ownership of the migration issue and witnessed the government take over the monopoly on enemy images. The analysis reveals how Jobbik-mayors employ conscious strategies for enemy-making and scapegoating with respect to -chiefly, but not exclusively -the Roma population, and how this drives the policies they try to implement. The research also sheds light on the remarkable tension between ideological and pragmatic considerations, and on how the former limits the enforcement of scapegoat-based policies.
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