John Kincaid, Robert B. and Helen S. Meyner Professor of Government and Public Service, co-authored a blog for the London School of Economics Phelan U.S. Center, discussing how the most important feature of U.S. responses to COVID-19 has been polarization between the country’s two major political parties.
The blog, written with J. Wesley Leckrone, professor of political science at Widener University, breaks down both the national and state/local responses to the pandemic outbreak in early 2020. Even now, the blog points out, elite polarization and voter polarization, along with very low levels of trust in the federal government, continue to frustrate more effective intergovernmental COVID-19 policymaking.