Governments around the world are taking very different approaches to tackling Covid-19, and in many cases they are driven as much by political expediency as the underlying infection rate.
Marc Champion takes a closer look at what the pandemic could mean for the populist leaders ushered into power by the fallout from the 2008 financial crisis.
The U.S. is now the site of the most confirmed cases, putting President Donald Trump center stage as he tries to mitigate the impact of the virus on the world's largest economy in an election year.
Like populist leaders in countries from Brazil to Hungary, Trump's natural instinct is to portray the country as under siege — he's called it a foreign virus — and find an enemy to blame. There's evidence his strategy isn't harming him politically. A recent poll showed 60% of Americans approve of Trump's handing of the crisis.
But it's unclear how the public will react as the death toll continues to grow, with cities like New York and New Orleans now in the front line.
While it's too soon to predict which governments will suffer politically from their approach to the virus, questions are growing over whether populists' grip on power will loosen.
— Alan Crawford
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