Trusting
The Process

Melina Platas, assistant professor of political science, researches sub-Saharan African countries’ response to COVID-19, their citizenry’s attitudes about various public health policies, and trust in the implementation of simple orders such as wearing a mask.

The research measures how people living in Kenya, Nigeria, and Uganda gauged their respective government’s policies early in the pandemic.

Conducted online during the initial wave of lockdown policies, Platas and her co-authors were interested in seeing how people were faring during these policies and what they thought about COVID-19. The results showed people in those countries had good factual information about the coronavirus, and were supportive of policies like encouraging social distancing and stay-at-home orders.

However, the research did point to an interesting view citizens had on those measures that could be extrapolated to the rest of the world.

They found that although people supported early pandemic policies and found them to be effective, they often were not practicing them. Roughly half of their respondents reported not practicing measures such as social distancing, masking-wearing, and stay-at-home orders.

“It seemed in people’s heads that they supported the policies, they knew measures such as social distancing were effective however, they often were not practicing those behaviors,” she said.

Platas believes that one of the main reasons behind this was that although people found those policies to be effective, they had little trust that others would adhere to those measures. This could have broader implications. Platas says that one reason why people around the world ignore public health measures could be that they don't expect others to adhere to them. Believing that others will practice behaviors such as physical distancing and mask wearing is especially important when governments must rely on voluntary compliance by the public rather than top-down enforcement.

Her work thus also reflects how the relationship between a citizenry and the respective government affects public health policies. In the UAE, for example, she said that because the government can credibly issue and enforce public health measures, compliance with these orders is high.

“That, however, is very rare around the world. Most governments do not have the capacity or legitimacy, or the will, even, to enforce those kinds of policies,” she said. Under such circumstances, it requires the collective behavior of the public to achieve widespread compliance with public health measures.

Furthermore, another reason behind why low-income countries might resist certain policies, such as lockdown orders, is due to the nature of their economies. With so much of the citizenry living day-to-day, lockdown orders and the disruption of their daily income would be devastating to their families.

“These policies could lead to their income drying up completely, and often they don’t have a lot of savings either. So, we were interested in well-being during the lockdown period and how people were faring during these conditions,” she said.

Although the research is specifically targeted at the aforementioned sub-Saharan African countries, the results have implications for policy-making as a whole. Platas continues to conduct research on COVID-19 in those countries and filling a void in the lack of social science research being done in that region relative to high income countries.