Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has put many political leaders in the spotlight. While almost all countries struggled to mitigate the virus, predominantly the well-capable democratic countries...Show moreBackground: The COVID-19 pandemic has put many political leaders in the spotlight. While almost all countries struggled to mitigate the virus, predominantly the well-capable democratic countries acted indecisively and were reluctant to respond. Autocratic countries, in contrast, performed better, especially in the first eight weeks after the outbreak. Interestingly, every country worldwide adopted a somehow different crisis response strategy, but they had one thing in similar: broadcasting a national television address to inform the nation. Due to the extremely high number of views, every word matters, and hence it sparked the interest to dive deeper into this correlation between language and the citizens' trust and compliance. Methods: For this study, a content analysis was conducted on these live addresses to the nation. Throughout the research, a comparative political perspective is used to discover possible similarities and differences between the two regimes. In total, speeches of eight countries were analyzed with a mix between inductive and deductive codes (China, Vietnam, Russia, Niger, U.S., France, U.K., Germany). Findings: Four primary themes emerged: sentiment towards the virus, attempts to achieve obedience, described strategy, and expected timespan. All leaders spread their deep concerns, however, autocracies leaders more often emphasized the high risks of transmission, and did not downplay the risks one single time. Contrastingly, in the democratic speeches forms of reluctance were spotted, which directly or indirectly can lead to a lower level of obedience to the restriction measures. Democratic leaders also appeal to the population more emotionally, in contrast to the more descriptive and aggressive autocratic rhetoric. Furthermore, penalizing disobediences was mentioned often by the autocratic leaders and solely once by the democratic ones. Also, whereas 'flatten the transmission curve' is mentioned as the primary goal of the democratic leaders to find a balance between the health impact and economic impact, the autocracies state that totally 'defeating' the virus is the goal, disregarding the economic impact. What seems prevalent is that almost all leaders do not back their described timespan with the factual data. As a result, statements that the crisis is almost over, or just at the start, lack the evidence and appear to be vague estimations or guesses.Show less
Research master thesis | Political Science and Public Administration (research) (MSc)
open access
2017-01-01T00:00:00Z
Why do democracies not go to war with other democracies? The idea that the internalized liberal-democratic norms of peaceful conflict resolution within a democratic society are responsible for the...Show moreWhy do democracies not go to war with other democracies? The idea that the internalized liberal-democratic norms of peaceful conflict resolution within a democratic society are responsible for the democratic peace, also referred to as the normative explanation, remains subject to a particular lack of empirical academic attention. The few studies into the normative explanation have not tested what should be tested: whether liberal democratic norms indeed affect the behavior of democratic citizens in comparison to the behavior of nondemocratic citizens. This research performs an improved empirical test and studies (1) whether liberal norms exist in a democracy in comparison to a non-democracy and (2) whether these norms have an effect on the individuals of these societies concerning the wish to use force in International Relations. An experimental design showed that there was no significant difference between a group of Dutch students and a group of Chinese students when it comes to the use of force in IR. A marginal effect of the regime type for the democratic citizens was found. Remarkably, in a comparison with the autocratic experimental group, these democratic citizens turned out not to be specifically more peaceful towards other democracies, but rather more war-prone towards autocracies. The overall conclusion of this study is that for both experimental groups the perception of threat was the main indicator for a decision to attack. This research argues that, in contrast with earlier research, there is no support to the claim that the normative explanation can explain the empirically found peace between democracies.Show less
