'developing' labels

sector (such as health care) or levying more stringent regulations.

Even the mainstream left in the US shies away from a full-throated endorsement of universal health care. At the same time, American politicians continue to debate whether to regulate big tech even as social-media platforms are used to derail America's democracy.

Arab Gulf monarchies, by contrast, have chosen to follow a Singapore-style corporatist model where the state, in effect, runs forprofit conglomerates. This perhaps explains why countries in the Gulf region such as the United Arab Emirates have been able to marshal significant private-sector resources and expertise toward combating the pandemic.

Nevertheless, low oil prices and an exodus of white-collar expatriates mean that these countries too will need to reinvent their economic models very soon.

Contrast the American type of political economy with France or Scandinavian countries. In these countries, sector-by-sector collective bargaining by labor has meant decent wages and better working conditions. Unlike Americans, Scandinavians do not need to work two jobs just to put food on the table while a small slice of the population controls vast swaths of the economy.

In several European countries, health care is regarded as a public good whose provision is seen as the state's fundamental duty.

This is not to suggest that these models are perfect. Unlike in the US, France's official data on income inequality do not capture racial disparity. French nationalism and the institutions that flow out of it simply do not see race. This does not augur well for racial harmony or economic equality - both closely intertwined in France and the US.

The pandemic has also revealed whether countries' governing models are fit for purpose. It is no longer sufficient to classify countries simply as liberal democracies or illiberal autocracies.

Indeed, demagogues like Rodrigo Duterte, Narendra Modi and Viktor Orban, who have all taken a sledgehammer to their countries' democratic institutions in the recent past, all emerged via the ballot box.

Another way of classifying countries politically could be via their governance models. American federalism, with its strong local and state governments, ought to have been a more competent model to combat the pandemic. However, its designers probably did not anticipate the dysfunctions of a two-party system.

American federalism, coupled with its two-party system, and with a megalomaniacal president at the helm, is the key reason the country is marked by such a dismal record when it comes to combating the pandemic. On the other hand, strong top-down actions by centralized states in Vietnam and South Korea have seen these countries combat the pandemic rather successfully.

Only a single-party dictatorship like China could have subjected its population to mass surveillance and stringent lockdowns. In Vietnam, entire districts were sealed by the government, with no one allowed to enter or leave. Actions taken by the Chinese and Vietnamese states would have been politically unpalatable in democracies. Yet they worked.

But this is not to rubbish the virtues of liberal, open democracies. For the flip side to this argument is that precisely because China is not an open society, the virus spun out of control in its initial days. Were the virus to have broken out in more open societies, the press and civil society would have been the first to raise the alarm.