Contagious Policies? Studying National Responses to a Global Pandemic in Europe

Not only Covid-19 has spread all over the world-the policies responding to this pandemic have also diffused rapidly across countries. In this research note, we present findings from an original dataset that features mobility restrictions in all EU/EFTA states as well as the United Kingdom during the first wave of the pandemic. We find that most countries adopted restrictions within a few days only and that restrictions on internal mobility had been introduced prior to restrictions on cross-border mobility, but that the latter have been more persistent. Furthermore, we observe an evolution from great variation of policy choices at the outset of the pandemic towards convergence. Analyzing the mobility restrictions through a policy diffusion lens, we find tentative evidence for interdependent policy-making especially in the temporal patterns of adoption. Our research note can serve a basis for future research on policy-making and policy diffusion in times of crisis.