State Capacity and Policy Diffusion in Latin America: The Case of COVID-19

Did state capacity play a crucial role in the diffusion of non-pharmaceutical interventions in Latin America? Some studies found homogeneity in the declaration of a state of emergency, which suggests policy diffusion in Latin America, while other studies argued varieties in non-pharmaceutical interventions in the region. In order to bridge such a gap in the literature, this chapter studies the relationship between state capacity and policy diffusion by combining a dyadic approach, which is commonly used in the study of policy diffusion, with a text analysis on presidential decrees issued in 12 countries between February and March in 2020. Focusing on the very first stage of the pandemic, which allows us to isolate emulation from other mechanisms of policy diffusion, statistical tests of this study showed that emulation of presidential decrees on COVID-19 policies was related to delivery capacity in public health issues, and that countries with a lower general administrative capacity or a lower delivery capacity in public health tended to imitate the presidential decrees of other countries.