In the former category, for example, are the Nordic countries. Experts consistently rate these countries’ democracies as strong, while their citizens’ satisfaction with democracy and levels of social trust remain very high. The responses of the region’s governments and societies to the crisis clearly reflect these features. [...]
On the policy front, the Swedish government also quickly announced measures to help citizens and businesses through the crisis, including covering workers’ salaries to avoid layoffs, providing loans, tax holidays and more. As in Denmark, the minority social-democrat government’s ability to pass such policies and its general response to the evolving crisis has been facilitated by the willingness of opposition parties to co-operate in parliament. In Sweden, as in Denmark, the idea that it is the government’s job to protect society and the economy is uncontroversial. [...]
One of the most striking aspects of the initial American response was the deep divergence between elites and citizens over basic facts. Initially, many Republican politicians and much of the right-wing media portrayed the crisis as a ‘hoax’, and the ‘hysteria’ about it a left-wing conspiracy to ‘destabilise the country and destroy’ Donald Trump. One prime-time host on Fox told viewers that concerns about the coronavirus were ‘yet another attempt to impeach the president’. [...]
But it isn’t just the government’s capacity to respond to challenges that has decayed. The willingness of Trump and Republicans even to recognise the need for government action is also lacking. They have used mistrust of ‘big government’—and more generally a rejection of the idea that it is the government’s job to protect society and the economy—as an excuse to reject policies that even conservatives in other countries accept as necessary.
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