The connection between women leaders and superior pandemic performance is likely spurious. This narrative overlooks that women currently govern precisely the kinds of countries that should mount effective pandemic responses: wealthy democracies with high state capacity. This article maps where women currently serve as presidents and prime ministers. The article then uses data from the Varieties of Democracy Project and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development to show that many women-led countries score high on state capacity and that high-capacity states have low coronavirus mortality regardless of whether they are led by women or by men. Arguments emphasizing women chief executives’ superior pandemic performance, while offered in good faith, are misleading.

Broader structural developments in Japan in the past two decades—decline of clientelist practices, partisan de-alignment, and decentralization—have dissolved traditionally close ties between national and local party systems, creating an environment conducive to the emergence of local parties. In this context, popular chief executives in four regions launched new parties. I trace how these parties emerged and how national parties reacted to them, from the appearance of the new-party leaders to the 2011 local elections. In comparing the four cases, two factors appear to shape their trajectories: the urbanness of their electoral environments and the responses of the two national parties at the local and the national level. In dealing with the new challengers, both the Liberal Democratic Party and Democratic Party of Japan experienced considerable intraparty conflict and defections, indicating a process of delinking between national and local party systems.