There is a lot of social science research about COVID-19, both in the United States and around the world. Much of it focuses on the role of elite messaging in affecting pandemic-related beliefs and behaviors. Most scholars believe—instinctively and intuitively—that elite messaging is a fundamentally important driver of behavior and public opinion about the pandemic. […]

In a new working paper (PDF), Shana Gadarian, Sara Goodman, and I think carefully about the partisan politics of COVID-19. The 10 second pitch? Trumpism explains the data on prosocial health behaviors much better than does partisanship or ideology. For reasons that are not clear to me, SSRN has declared that this paper requires special […]