Challenging Trust in Government: COVID in Sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

COVID-19, arguably the new millennium's most trying test of state capacity, caught the world off guard. In order to contain the spread of the virus, governments had to respond quickly and comprehensively: strict lockdowns, movement restrictions, masks, and social distancing - measures that draw not only on public resources but also on the buy-in and cooperation of civil society. Citizen compliance and cooperation are founded on trust in government institutions. As such, the pandemic has also been a stress test for trust in government. Trust in government is a crucial determinant of effective crisis management, and governments lacking such trust suffer a profound disadvantage. In many instances, strict lockdown measures were accompanied by an expansion of executive powers. This creates power imbalances, or aggravates existing ones, and poses a threat to trust in government. High levels of vaccine hesitancy, a looming recession, and expectations of government support require ongoing efforts to build and ensure trust in government. Even though many African countries seem to have gotten through the coronavirus crisis relatively well until now, vaccine hesitancy and looming recessions pose ongoing challenges for trust in government. Hence, governments must actively engage in building trust as they prepare for future crises. The Ebola epidemic has shown that a bottom-up approach entailing collaboration with pre-existing networks and institutions at the local level can facilitate this process. In contexts where executive powers have been expanded, the evolution of this process needs to be carefully monitored.