COVID‐19‐related anxieties do not decrease support for liberal democracy

Abstract

Studies carried out at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic widely confirmed that under the impression of fear and anxiety individuals were more willing to tolerate violations of liberal-democratic norms and support discriminatory policies to preserve public safety. We still lack an understanding of the potential consequences of the pandemic on citizens' attitudes beyond its peak. To address this puzzle, we present evidence from an original experiment in which we manipulate individuals' cognitive accessibility of their fears related to COVID-19. We conducted this experiment in Hungary and Romania-two cases most likely to see such attitudes amplify under the condition of fear-one and a half years after the onset of the pandemic. The results show that our intervention is successful in elevating respondents' levels of worry, anxiety, and fear when thinking about infectious diseases like COVID-19. However, these emotions do not carry secondary effects on individuals' levels of rightwing authoritarianism, nationalism, or outgroup hostility, nor do they affect preferences for specific discriminatory policy measures aimed to fight a potential resurgence of COVID-19. We discuss these findings in light of the literature on elite-engineered emotions.

Coalition Politics in Central Eastern Europe

“…Moreover, elevated levels of support for democracy prevail among the public in these countries, there is a public demand for democracy. Although the concrete relevance of this public demand and support of democracy is regularly challenged in face of severe democratic backlash in a number of countries, we should note that exactly in the crisis context crisis-triggered fears and the fear-mongering government agenda have not subdued citizens' democratic attitudes (Anghel and Schulte-Cloos 2022). Varied governance patterns and the differences in crisis management confirm that the trajectories are diverse and that to talk about a single track of democratic backlash is not justified (Cianetti et al 2018).…”

The COVID-19 pandemic eroded system support but not social solidarity

“…Consistent with this, 2020 saw a seven percent increase in public protests worldwide, many of them directly targeting pandemic restrictions [ 19 ]. Experimental evidence demonstrated that COVID-19 induced anger–but not fear or anxiety–depresses support for democracy and increases support for authoritarian alternative [ 20 , 21 ]. At the same time, democratic standards themselves may be waning: both American and British respondents supported emergency measures encroaching civil liberties proposed by their party or by trusted experts [ 22 ].…”

Sociopolitical consequences of COVID‐19 in the Americas, Europe, and Asia: A multilevel, multicountry investigation of risk perceptions and support for antidemocratic practices

“…Consequently, research on the political consequences of COVID‐19 argued that, as an existential threat, the pandemic can be instrumentalized to erode rights and liberties and reinforce antidemocratic forms of governance (Cooper & Aitchinson, 2020; Youngs & Panchulidze, 2020). More recent research, however, has shown that fear and panic triggered by the pandemic did not decrease support for liberal democracy in some societies (Anghel & Schulte‐Cloos, 2022). Instead, it created, at least during the early stages, a rally‐around‐the flag effect during which trust in institutions and leaders peaked (Yam et al, 2020).…”