Drawing on tools from social and political psychology, we suspected that emotional reactions – particularly fear – would play a key role in willingness to sacrifice civil liberties.
Indeed, we found that trust in government played a key role in predicting attitude change in a liberty-restricting direction. Such citizens may also be more confident that their liberties will be restored once the pandemic ends. We suspected that citizens who trust the government may be more likely to believe that civil-restricting measures are well intentioned and benevolent. Following past research on the impact of 9/11 in the US, we investigated whether trust in government would render citizens more willing to restrict their freedoms. We investigated the reasons behind attitude change toward mobile phone surveillance and army-enforced curfews in five advanced European democracies (France, Italy, Austria, Germany, and the UK) between March and December 2020. What accounted for these rapid transformations of public opinion during the pandemic? Our recent research sought to answer this question. This percentage fell to 46% just one week later. For instance, in France on 16 and 17 March, 66% of respondents opposed mobile phone surveillance to track and trace infected individuals. Our research found astonishing volatility in attitudes toward sacrificing civil liberties, especially during the early phase of the pandemic. We tracked the same people from several countries over multiple points in time, to understand how and why social and political attitudes changed. With these past findings in mind, we started monitoring public attitudes at the onset of the pandemic in March 2020 using a longitudinal design. During threatening periods, people are more likely to agree with sacrificing freedoms and rights to protect themselves and others from harm. Much social science research concludes consistently that public support for civil liberties ebbs and flows along levels of societal threat. In fact, social scientists have warned that measures taken to tackle Covid-19 may, in some countries, have caused ' pandemic backsliding'.ĭespite their unprecedented and draconian character, restrictive measures were broadly accepted by the publicĭespite their unprecedented and draconian character, lockdowns, curfews, and mobile phone surveillance were broadly accepted by the public. Yet they lie in strong tension with fundamental democratic freedoms. Some of these restrictions were necessary to protect public health and save lives.
Surveillance and freedom of movement were particularly affected. The Covid-19 pandemic brought unprecedented restrictions to civil liberties in many democracies around the world. This, they argue, should worry proponents of democracy Restriction of civil liberties under Covid In research monitoring public attitudes during the Covid-19 pandemic, Pavlos Vasilopoulos, Haley McAvay, Sylvain Brouard, and Martial Foucault found that public commitment to civil liberties is highly volatile, especially when fear prevails.
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