The regionalization of politics and the COVID-19 pandemic

The conventional expectation is that national incumbent leaders gain support when their country faces a collective threat. In this paper we argue that the inclination to support the national incumbent is reduced when calamities are regional in nature. Relying on observational data from more than 1,500 elections in 150 countries we show that national politics became more regionalized after the COVID-19 pandemic, in particular in those countries where the pandemic was more severe and highly decentralized.