Political Economy of COVID-19 Response in Autocracies: Evidence from Russian Regions

How do authoritarian regimes respond to the global pandemic? Building on the principal-agent and blame avoidance frameworks, this paper develops a theory of authoritarian responses to the global pandemic drawing from theory-informing study of Russia. Contrary to the prevailing policy centralization trend, the response to COVID-19 in Russian Federation was however delegated to the sub-national level of government. The regional authorities faced a trade-off between saving the lives of the population and minimizing economic losses. I argue that preferences of the sub-national leaders regarding the trade-off were primarily determined by political incentives and their personal characteristics, specifically proximity of elections, governor’s power, and governor’s status of the outsider. The study applies statistical analysis to understand the factors determining the relative stringency of the local anti-COVD-19 policies in authoritarian context.