Trust in government in Sweden and Denmark during the COVID-19 epidemic

Abstract

Did the different public-health policies that Sweden and Denmark pursued in the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic result in different levels of public trust in governments' and health authorities' ability to guide the two countries safely through the pandemic? How did the level of trust change as the pandemic unfolded? And were there any cross-country differences in the correlates of trust? Using three original representative surveys conducted in Sweden and Denmark between late March and late June, 2020, this article answers these questions. It finds that Danes consistently trusted their government and health authorities more than the Swedes did. While Swedish trust was politicized and shaped by ideology from the onset of the pandemic, this only later became the case in Denmark. The findings provide insights into popular evaluations of different public-health policies in two otherwise similar countries, with implications for future policy making.Sweden and Denmark adopted markedly different public-health policies during the COVID-19 pandemic. Whereas Sweden became famous, perhaps infamous, for its liberal approach, which relied heavily on principles of voluntarism and personal responsibility, Denmark opted for more stringent policies, closing its borders early on and shutting all its schools in the middle of March 2020. We ask how these policies influenced public trust in the ability of the Swedish and Danish governments and public-health authorities to guide the two countries safely through the pandemic. 1 In a global perspective, Sweden and Denmark are socially and institutionally similar countries, but they made very different choices when the new coronavirus spread across Europe in early 2020. This allows us to investigate whether differences in public-health policies mattered for how citizens felt about their political leaders and their public-health authorities.

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