Culture, institutions and democratization

Identifying culture as cause: Challenges and opportunities

Causal inference lies at the core of many scientific endeavours. Yet answering causal questions is challenging, especially when studying culture as a causal force. Against this backdrop, this paper reviews research designs and statistical tools that can be used - together with strong theory and knowledge about the context of study - to identify the causal impact of culture on outcomes of interest. We especially discuss how overlooked strategies in cultural evolutionary studies can allow one to approximate an ideal experiment wherein culture is randomly assigned to individuals or entire groups (instrumental variables, regression discontinuity design, and epidemiological approach). In doing so, we also review the potential outcome framework as a tool to engage in causal reasoning in the cultural evolutionary field.

Disease and democracy: Political regimes and countries responsiveness to COVID-19

A widely held belief is that autocratic governments have been more effective in reducing the movement of people to curb the spread of COVID-19. Using daily information on lockdown measures and geographic mobility across more than 130 countries, we find that autocratic regimes have indeed imposed more stringent lockdowns and relied more on contact tracing. However, we find no evidence that autocratic governments were more effective in reducing travel, and evidence to the contrary: compliance with the lockdown measures taken was higher in countries with democratically accountable governments. Exploring a host of potential mechanisms, we provide suggestive evidence that democratic institutions are associated with attitudes that support collective action, such as mounting a coordinated response to a pandemic.

Diarrheal disease, sanitation, and culture in India

The health burden of childhood diarrhea in India has been a major public health concern. This study examines the role of the individualism-collectivism dichotomy in the prevalence of diarrhea in children under the age of five in India. Using subnational data on rice suitability to measure collectivism, we provide evidence that collectivism is negatively associated with the prevalence of childhood diarrhea across 618 Indian districts. We find that the mechanism works through improvements in water and sanitation. Collectivism propagates values of interdependence, cooperation and collective action which increases safe water and sanitation practices, thereby reducing the prevalence of diarrhea in children.

Culture and contagion: Individualism and compliance with COVID-19 policy

In the first wave of the pandemic, places where geographic mobility declined more rapidly saw fewer cases of COVID-19. And yet, there is significant variation in people's compliance with the lockdown measures introduced by governments in order to curb the spread of the virus. In this paper, we show that much of this variation can be explained by different cultural traits. Specifically, we advance the hypothesis that individualism, which puts greater value on personal freedom, makes government intervention harder, whereas collectivism, which emphasises the wellbeing of the group, makes collective action easier. We find support for these ideas across 111 countries, but also when exploiting within country variation in the two largest economies in the world: China and the United States. Across a host of specifications, people were less abiding by the lockdown rules in places with greater prevalence of individualistic cultural traits. We conclude that cultural factors play a critical role in successful policy implementation.

The 'Great Lockdown' and its determinants

Since COVID-19 was declared a pandemic, countries on the same pandemic trajectory have adopted very different lockdown strategies. Using data for over 132 countries, and employing an event-study design, this paper identifies the role of political, economic and institutional factors in explaining the differential timing and intensity of stringency measures undertaken.