Rally and Rage: The Gap between Specific and Pandemic-Specific Support for Governments in Europe

0584916 - SOÚ 2025 RIV CH eng J - Journal Article
Plecitá, Klára
Rally and Rage: The Gap between Specific and Pandemic-Specific Support for Governments in Europe.
Social Sciences. Roč. 13, č. 3 (2024), č. článku 146. E-ISSN 2076-0760
R&D Projects: GA MŠMT LM2018139; GA MŠMT LTT20011
Institutional support: RVO:68378025
Keywords : pandemic * satisfaction with democracy * support for government * trust in government * Europe
OECD category: Political science
Impact factor: 1.7, year: 2022
Method of publishing: Open access
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/13/3/146

In times of the COVID-19 pandemic, the public generally expressed high pandemic-specific support for their governments. Analysis based on ESS Round 10 COVID-19 module data from 20 countries shows, however, that there was a gap between pandemic-specific and specific support for governments in European states. A positive gap in favor of pandemic-specific support for governments was found among 52.7% of the respondents, while a negative trend was observed among 24.0% of the respondents. Younger people, those self-employed or working for family businesses, students, those with better subjective health, and people who tested positive for or thought they had suffered from COVID-19 expressed less satisfaction with the government’s handling of COVID-19 in their country compared to general satisfaction with national government performance. Political opinions affected the support gap too, people who were satisfied with the way democracy works, were less trusting of their government’s ability to control the spread of the pathogen, preferred their own decisions over compliance with government restrictions, and perceived that their government failed to manage the health–economy trade-off restrained their pandemic-specific support for the government as well.
Permanent Link: https://hdl.handle.net/11104/0352699