Pandemics meet democracy. Experimental evidence from the COVID-19 crisis in Spain

Abstract

The COVID-19 outbreak poses an unprecedented challenge for contemporary democracies. Despite the global scale of the problem, the response has been mainly national, and global coordination has been so far extremely weak. All over the world governments are making use of exceptional powers to enforce lockdowns, often sacrificing civil liberties and profoundly altering the pre-existing power balance, which nurtures fears of an authoritarian turn. Relief packages to mitigate the economic consequences of the lockdowns are being discussed, and there is little doubt that the forthcoming recession will have important distributive consequences. In this paper we study citizens' responses to these democratic dilemmas. We present results from a set of survey experiments run in Spain from March 20 to March 28, together with longitudinal evidence from a panel survey fielded right before and after the virus outbreak. Our findings reveal a strong preference for a national as opposed to a European/international response. The national bias is much stronger for the COVID-19 crisis than for other global problems, such as climate change or international terrorism. We also find widespread demand for strong leadership, willingness to give up individual freedom, and a sharp increase in support for technocratic governance. As such, we document the initial switch in mass public preferences towards technocratic and authoritarian government caused by the pandemic. We discuss to what extent this crisis may contribute to a shift towards a new, self-enforcing political equilibrium.

Explaining the homogeneous diffusion of COVID-19 nonpharmaceutical interventions across heterogeneous countries

“…If restrictions in civil liberties due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic are more rapidly adopted by countries already experiencing a decline in democracy, such countries may be susceptible to further autocratization in face of exogenous chocks such as pandemics. Recent evidence from Spain suggests that the pandemic may have caused the population to look more favorably on technocratic and authoritarian government (56). Our study provides fertile ground for research on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, which, to date, has merely begun to grapple with the pandemic's short-term effects.…”

“…Since the crucial control variables "confirmed cases" and "number of deaths" from COVID-19 come with known measurement errors across countries, we explored alternative measures, including whether a country had 10 or more confirmed cases, but found substantively similar results. All results were also robust to the inclusion of standard controls for systematic variation in public statistics provided across countries (49,56), indicating that such variation is low across the OECD countries. We also followed ref.…”

Civil Liberties in Times of Crisis

“…6 Our work contributes to understanding how crises and collective experience could shape such perceptions and underlying preferences. Specifically in the context of COVID-19 pandemic, Rees-Jones et al (2020) find that exposure to the COVID-19 pandemic makes individuals in the US more favorable of government-provided healthcare and unemployment insurance programs; Amat et al (2020) show that such exposure (in Spain) is associated with lower support in the incumbent; and Bol et al (2020) document that experiences of strict lockdown in March and April in Europe are associated with higher trust in the incumbent. Our paper highlights how exposure to crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic could change citizens' attitudes over the fundamental trade-offs between civil liberties and public health conditions.…”

COVID-19, Security Threats and Public Opinions

“…Thirdly, as in the aftermath of terrorist attacks, the health crisis creates a fertile environment for more hierarchical and authoritarian societies. Taking advantage of survey experiments fielded in Spain in March 2020, Amat et al (2020) convincingly demonstrate how the COVID-19 outbreak made citizens more willing to sacrifice civil liberties to fight the pandemic, as well as more supportive of a strong leadership. They also discover that the pandemic has increased the value citizens assign to the competence and training of politicians, at the expense of other qualities, such as honesty, signaling an increase in the support for expertrule and for a technocratic approach to the management of public affairs.…”

“…Amat et al (2020) argue that there are parallels to be drawn between terrorism and the COVID-19, but find that, whereas both push preferences towards a national response as opposed to a European/international one, the national bias is much stronger for the latter. 6 See e.g., https://www.ft.com/content/0e83be62-6e98-11ea-89df-41bea055720b.COVID-19 and Public Opinions…”