This paper considers the policy responses of post-Soviet regimes to the C-19 pandemic compared with OECD countries. It does so using two crude indicators of public policy success: the number of cases and the number of deaths per million resulting from...
This paper considers the policy responses of post-Soviet regimes to the C-19 pandemic compared with OECD countries. It does so using two crude indicators of public policy success: the number of cases and the number of deaths per million resulting from the virus in each of the two categories of countries. We hypothesise that through repression and enforcement powers, post-Soviet countries have witnessed more successful health policy outcomes in tackling the pandemic. The research is cross-sectional in nature and the study shows initial empirical evidence of significantly lower death rates in post-Soviet compared to OECD countries, accepting the limitations of the data used in the analysis. We elaborate further by examining the policy responses of four case study countries to the pandemic: Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia and Turkmenistan.