Encouraged to Cheat? Federal Incentives and Career Concerns at the Sub-national Level as Determinants of Under-Reporting of COVID-19 Mortality in Russia
Journal: British Journal of Political Science
Year: 2022

Abstract This article investigates the determinants and consequences of manipulating COVID-19 statistics in an authoritarian federation using the Russian case. It abandons the interpretation of the authoritarian regime as a unitary actor and acknowledges the need to account for a complex interaction of various bureaucratic and political players to understand the spread and the logic of manipulation. Our estimation strategy takes advantage of a natural experiment where the onset of the pandemic a