50,000 political decisions from 195 countries open to analysis

Largest database on Covid-19 measures available online

All of the data are publicly available at www.coronanet-project.org and can be filtered by various categories. This permits enormously comprehensive and highly granular analysis of the data, for example to compare lockdown restrictions in South Korea and Singapore or whether Covid testing measures in California were ordered by the state or federal government. A dashboard enables users to visualize timelines for the decisions being studied. In addition, the research group has produced numerous policy summaries on individual countries.

The data can also be exported and, for users with limited experience with statistics software, CoronaNet offers a learning platform. “CoronaNet is a genuine open science project,” says project leader Luca Messerschmidt of the Chair of International Relations at TUM. “Amid the enormous uncertainty, our goal is to move at maximum speed to create as many resources as we can for the most valuable analysis possible,” adds Dr. Cindy Cheng, the second project leader.

The database is already being accessed by policy makers, researchers and media around the world, in particular to correlate the policy measures with Covid-19 case numbers to evaluate their effectiveness. Members of the CoronaNet group also used the data in their own research. For example, the scientists compared pandemic policies in centralized states and countries with a federal structure. Their results showed that not all federal states have had decision making powers comparable to those of Germany’s federal states with regard to pandemic measures. In Switzerland, for example, these powers have been centralized from the cantons up to the federal government.

In another study, the researchers confirmed the widespread conjecture that Covid measures that simultaneously serve to suppress criticism are more common in authoritarian states. In particular, governments in such countries are more likely to enact lockdowns and curfews. They have also done so at an earlier stage in the pandemic and kept those regulations in place for longer periods. (These two studies are currently undergoing the scientific peer review process and are available as preprints.)

The team has set the goal of a five-day lag between the collection of new data on political decisions on Covid-19 and database coding. Other research groups are providing additional data. CoronaNet is also taking part in the major project PERISCOPE, launched in November, in which 32 research institutes are investigating the social, political and economic effects of the pandemic in Europe.

“The pandemic is constantly posing new challenges for governments all over the world,” says Prof. Tim Büthe, the holder of the Chair of International Relations and coordinator of the TUM PERISCOPE projects. “That makes it even more important to provide input to shape policies so that decisions can be made on the basis of solid scientific evidence. This requires large quantities of high-quality data. Consequently, one cannot over-emphasize the value of the achievements and commitments, especially of the doctoral candidates and students, in building this database so quickly.”