Submational Response to the COVID Pandemic in Argentina: Local Governments in the Greater Buenos Aires Area

BEHREND, JACQUELINE; SIMPSON, XIMENA

Congreso; American Political Science Association Annual Conferernce; 2021

American Political Science Association

This paper analyses variation in the response of four local governments in the Greater Buenos Aires area to the COVID pandemic. The Greater Buenos Aires is the metropolitan area that surrounds the capital city of Argentina. This area has a population of over 11 million, which represents 25 per cent of the total population of Argentina. The population is very heterogeneous and most of Argentina?s urban poor live in the area. It is also the area that experienced the greatest number of infections by COVID in the country. Some of the questions this paper aims to address are: How did local governments respond to the challenges posed by the COVID pandemic in one of the most socially vulnerable regions of the country? What factors explain variation in the mitigation policies undertaken by local governments? How did local governments coordinate their actions with other levels of government ? provincial, national and with other local governments ? and what tensions arose? The paper seeks to answer these questions through a comparison of four local governments in the Greater Buenos Aires Area: San Martín, Tres de Febrero, Avellaneda and Quilmes. These four districts share similar socio-economic characteristics and each has a population of between 340,000 and 580,000. However, they have different political and electoral histories. The comparison of these four case studies will shed light on the various political, social and policy factors that account for greater or lesser success of policy responses to the COVID pandemic.