Unmasking partisanship: Polarization undermines public response to collective risk

Trading Liberties: Most citizens do support restricting freedoms in times of crisis

“…The paper also contributes to the literature on political polarization in response to the COVID-19 crisis. Focussing on the US, previous research found a partisan gap in individual behavior like the use of face masks (Milosh et al 2021), physical distancing (Allcott et al 2020;Grossman et al 2020), compliance with shutdowns (Camobreco and He 2022), and the search for information on the virus (Barrios and Hochberg 2020). We extend this line of research and show that partisan differences also exist in terms of what tradeoffs between personal freedoms and public welfare people are willing to make.…”

Inequalities in the disruption of paid work during the Covid‐19 pandemic: A world systems analysis of core, semi‐periphery, and periphery states

“…At the beginning of the pandemic, when governments had to rely on their understanding of a rapidly evolving situation, balancing between public health and economic liberty, decisions as to whether and when to intervene were to a large extent political (Boettke & Powell, 2021 ; Gitmez et al, 2020 ; Lipscy, 2020 ; Milosh et al, 2020 ). Previous empirical studies have corroborated the decisive role of politics at the onset of the pandemic (Lipscy, 2020 ; Milosh et al, 2020 ). In this study, we focus on political populism and, specifically, on right‐wing populist ideology as a dominant form of populism that has two common features: the juxtaposition of “the people” against “the elite”; and an anti‐pluralist rhetoric where populist leaders position themselves as sole representatives of “ordinary” people (Acemoglu et al, 2013 ; Eichengreen, 2018 ; Galston, 2018 ).…”

“…Following this, we posit that trajectories of state intervention in the labor market in the early months of the pandemic were influenced by political populism and the institutionalization of employment relations within world systems. Populism—understood for the purpose of our study in terms of governments or leaders who espouse anti‐establishment and anti‐elitist rhetoric (Acemoglu et al, 2013 ; Eichengreen, 2018 )—matters, because at the onset of the COVID‐19 crisis, when information on the new pandemic was scant, decisions as to whether and when to intervene were to a large extent political (Boettke & Powell, 2021 ; Gitmez et al, 2020 ; Milosh et al, 2020 ; Lipscy, 2020 ). Right‐wing populism—the currently dominant form of populist ideology (Eichengreen, 2018 )—is a growing area of interest for employment relations scholars and the key focus of our study (Cumming et al, 2020 ).…”

Voting under threat: Evidence from the 2020 French local elections

“…Political heterogeneity A recent literature has pointed to the crucial role of political affiliation in shaping the perception of the pandemic (Allcott et al (2020), Milosh et al (2020). Makridis and Rothwell (2020) or feel more anger at the system (drop in D), this may contribute to decreasing their participation disproportionately.…”