Does Trust in Government Improve COVID-19’s Crisis Management?

Countries have adopted several measures to control the spread of Covid-19. However, substantial differences remain in terms of performance in controlling the virus, potentially due to heterogeneity in citizen engagement with government measures. Drawing on this observation, this paper seeks to analyze the effect of pre-crisis ties, particularly trust in government, on crisis management, proxied by the number of Covid-19 cases and deaths per million population. We examine this question based on a sample of 41 countries for which data are available. Results reveal that a high level of trust in government predicts better crisis management in terms of relatively low levels of cases and deaths. These results, which successfully pass a series of robustness tests, may vary according to level of contamination and increase with time.