Abstract
The students of the Spring 2021 Capstone class of the Master of Arts program in United Nations and Global Policy Studies (UNMA) of the Political Science Department at Rutgers University (New Brunswick) decided, as one of their assignments, to each write a chapter about how various governments handled the onset of Covid-19. The result is a ten-chapter e-book entitled Covid-19 Under Democracy and Autocracy, edited by the course professor, Dr. Roland Rich. The ten countries are Australia, Brazil, Cuba, Germany, Russia, South Africa, Taiwan, Uganda, the United Kingdom and Vietnam.
While the initial focus of the investigation was whether the pandemic was better handled by democracies or autocracies, it became clear that the regime type distinction was not the key variable. Issues of geography and recent history were critical. Ultimately, the book demonstrated that competent handling of the pandemic could be found among both democracies and autocracies and that was also true of incompetent responses.