Piscis a capite olere incipit: Does leadership ideology have an impact on the spread of COVID-19?

Research devoted to understanding the determinants of attitudes toward non-pharmaceutical interventions has highlighted the relevance of political beliefs. Did countries perform differently during the pandemic depending on whether they were led by right- or left-wing leaders? Exploiting novel data, we build an original dataset with information about pandemic trends and leaders’ ideologies in 126 countries. The dataset is used to investigate in a quantitative framework the relationship between the two. We find no evidence in favour of any ideological stance in determining pandemic trends. Hence, results suggest that the role of the ideology of political leaders or head of governments was, on average, irrelevant in influencing the unfold of the pandemic.