The Health of Democracies During the Pandemic: Results from a Randomized Survey Experiment

Concerns have been raised about the “demise of democracy”, possibly accelerated by pandemic-related restrictions. Using a survey experiment involving 8,206 respondents from five Western democracies, we find that subjects randomly exposed to information regarding civil liberties infringements underta...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:NBER Working Paper Series 2023-01
Main Authors: Alsan, Marcella, Braghieri, Luca, Eichmeyer, Sarah, Minjeong Joyce Kim, Stantcheva, Stefanie, Yang, David Y
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Civil liberties
Coronaviruses
COVID-19
Democracy
Demographics
Economic theory
Economics
Experiments
Health risk assessment
Health risks
Medical research
Pandemics
Privacy
Public health
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Summary:Concerns have been raised about the “demise of democracy”, possibly accelerated by pandemic-related restrictions. Using a survey experiment involving 8,206 respondents from five Western democracies, we find that subjects randomly exposed to information regarding civil liberties infringements undertaken by China and South Korea to contain COVID-19 became less willing to sacrifice rights and more worried about their long-term-erosion. However, our treatment did not increase support for democratic procedures more generally, despite our prior evidence that pandemic-related health risks diminished such support. These results suggest that the start of the COVID-19 crisis was a particularly vulnerable time for democracies.
ISSN:0898-2937
DOI:10.3386/w30846