Modeling Central Asia’s Choices in Containing COVID-19: A Multivariate Study

• Published date: 01 October 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00953997231186996
• Author: Vincenzo Alfano,Salvatore Ercolano,Mauro Pinto
• Date: 01 October 2023
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/00953997231186996

Administration & Society

2023, Vol. 55(9) 1819 –1836

© The Author(s) 2023

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DOI: 10.1177/00953997231186996

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Article

Modeling Central

Asia’s Choices in

Containing COVID-19:

A Multivariate Study

Vincenzo Alfano1, Salvatore Ercolano2,

and Mauro Pinto3

Abstract

Different countries have adopted different policies in their fight against the

COVID-19 outbreak. In this work we aim to model these approaches with

respect to the first wave of COVID-19 (from January to October 2020)

in the five Central Asian republics (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan,

Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan). By means of a multivariate approach based

on principal component analysis and cluster analysis, we derived three

clusters. Each of these represents a different strategy adopted by a group of

governments in a given period of the first wave: pre-pandemic, initial reaction,

and emergency scenarios. The contribution of these results is two-fold: on

the one hand they may help us to understand differences and similarities

among Central Asian republics during the first wave of the COVID-19

outbreak and guide future quantitative or qualitative studies; on the other

hand, our findings suggest that, with the exception of Turkmenistan, the

different countries adopted very similar strategies and that deaths, more

than cases, pushed governments to impose restrictions.

1DiSEGIM, University of Napoli “Parthenope,” Napoli, Italy

2Department of Mathematics, Computer Science, and Economics, University of Basilicata,

Potenza, Basilicata, Italy

3Department of Political Sciences “Jean Monnet,” University of Campania Luigi Vanvitelli,

Napoli, Campania, Italy

Corresponding Author:

Vincenzo Alfano, DiSEGIM, University of Napoli “Parthenope,” Via Generale Parisi, 13, Napoli

80133, Italy.

Email: vincenzo.alfano@uniparthenope.it

1186996AAS0010.1177/00953997231186996Administration & SocietyAlfano et al.

research-article2023

1820 Administration & Society 55(9)

Keywords

COVID-19, Central Asia, government response, CA, PCA, OxCGRT

Introduction

In 2020 the entire world was overwhelmed by the coronavirus infectious dis-

ease (COVID-19) pandemic. For contemporary governments it was an

unprecedented event, which severely stressed not only health institutions but

also socio-economic and political internal structures. Countries resorted to a

number of strategies involving the adoption of health measures and non-

pharmaceutical interventions (NPI) to avoid the spread of the disease and

actively fight COVID-19 contagion. Since NPIs often imply social distanc-

ing, and hence come with significant economic (both monetary and non-

monetary) costs, governments modulated their restrictions depending on the

spread of the virus, using such policies only when they were perceived as

necessary, and experimenting with different national policy mixtures. Even

now, after the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the emergency

over, and when in many parts of the world the epidemic is little more than a

memory, the effectiveness of these various strategies remains an open and

critical issue. The topic remains very important. Although since the end of

2020 most countries have had more weapons at their disposal to fight the

virus, COVID-19 has not yet disappeared: new local waves return to strike in

various parts of the world and generate consequent crises.1 Establishing the

best path to emerge from the pandemic remains a crucial task, also because

pandemics have been predicted to become an increasingly common issue in

future (Adamson et al., 2021; Hotez, 2021; Simpson et al., 2020).

While the literature has focused largely on impact estimations of NPIs

reducing COVID-19 cases (Alfano & Ercolano, 2020; Figueiredo et al.,

2020; Lau et al., 2020; Mégarbane et al., 2021; Riccardo et al., 2020; Sardar

et al., 2020 on lockdowns; Alfano, 2022a; Alfano & Ercolano, 2020; Amodio

et al., 2021; Xu et al., 2020 on policies aimed at closing schools; Alfano,

2022b; Fischer, 2022 on football attendance), comparative analysis of

national policy mixes remains an underexplored branch of research. This is

partly because the heterogeneity of approaches makes it hard to compare dif-

ferent countries’ policy results. Given that national governments used differ-

ent strategies and put in place different policies to safeguard public health, it

is quite complex to disentangle these effects and effectively measure what

caused what. Moreover, since COVID-19 spread at varying speeds around

the globe, countries faced crises of varying severity at different times. This

severity was probably also influenced by different climate conditions, as well