The Limits of Institutions and the Reliance on Heuristics during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Leadership matters, but even more so in the midst of a crisis, where institutional mechanisms may be unequipped to deal with fast-moving circumstances. During such times, leaders are also prone to satisficing and relying on heuristics in order to come to decisions. This paper surveys the use of political heuristics and asserts that their use is directly proportional to the abilities of institutions; where institutions have no formal mechanisms to deal with a crisis, heuristics are relied on more heavily. In such a situation, policies tend to be more extreme than otherwise. Using the COVID-19 pandemic as the background, and in particular the decision to enter into a lockdown of varying degrees, this paper examines the use of heuristics by leaders during the crisis. Combining a case study approach with an empirical exercise, I show that institutional mechanisms were important for determining the response to the coronavirus as the pandemic began. However, once the full extent of the crisis was apparent, the attributes of leaders—relying on their pre-formed heuristics and playing out according to their ideologies, background, and experience—played a much more important role in determining the lockdown policy in a particular nation.