Infectious disease outbreaks drive political mistrust

Area of Science:

• Political Science
• Epidemiology
• Public Health

Background:

• Emerging infectious diseases have profound social implications, historically comparable to the Black Plague and Spanish Flu.
• The impact of epidemics on political trust and stability remains underexplored.
• Recent events like the COVID-19 pandemic underscore the need to understand disease outbreak consequences.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the causal relationship between exposure to zoonotic disease outbreaks and public confidence in political institutions.
• To quantify the effect of infectious disease outbreaks on trust in government entities.
• To provide empirical evidence on how epidemics influence political polarization and stability.

Main Methods:

• Utilized a novel dataset of zoonotic disease outbreaks (Ebola, Marburg, H1N1, Black Plague).
• Integrated geolocated Afrobarometer survey data from multiple African nations.
• Employed coarsened exact matching to estimate the average-treatment-effect-in-the-treated.

Main Results:

• Individuals experiencing infectious disease outbreaks showed significant declines in trust towards the political establishment.
• Trust reductions were most pronounced for the president (0.2 points), parliament (0.18 points), and ruling party (0.22 points) on a four-point scale.
• Findings remained consistent across different spatial and temporal analyses, confirming robustness.

Conclusions:

• Deadly infectious disease outbreaks demonstrably erode institutional trust and can exacerbate political polarization.
• These outbreaks pose a significant threat to political stability.
• Policy strategies must integrate public health preparedness with measures to maintain and restore institutional trust during health crises.