Social Injustice in Consolidated Authoritarian Regimes

Authoritarian countries have responded to the Covid-19 pandemic in ways which have negative implications for social justice but ironically produced better health outcomes as measured by deaths per 100k people. We examine four authoritarian states: Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia and Turkmenistan as examples of how they reacted to the pandemic. The data show that the four case study countries simply consolidated their repressive regimes which negatively impacted on social justice. Although self-reported health outcomes in authoritarian regimes must be treated with caution, their tactics disregarded basic human rights and resulted indisproportionate suffering of disadvantaged and vulnerable groups.