De Facto States and COVID-19: New Comparative Insights into Governmental Capacity to Act

Abstract This paper takes advantage of the exogenous shock of the COVID-19 pandemic to study de facto state agency. It builds upon previous scholarship on de facto states’ integration into international society by employing seven case studies while developing an independent capacity index. We argue that the COVID-19 pandemic is ideally suited to this task because it provided a powerful exogenous, non-conflict-related shock to all seven of our case studies, thus allowing for a valuable diagnostic tool from which to view how de facto states responded. We develop and test four specific theoretical hypotheses that offer different suggestions as to how well or how poorly individual de facto states might be expected to respond to the pandemic. Our empirical findings reveal Taiwan in a class by itself, followed by Northern Cyprus, Kosovo, and Transnistria with lesser agency, and finally, Abkhazia, Somaliland, and Nagorno-Karabakh with extremely limited agency.